Eretraa
by KnightedRogue
Summary: Han and Leia's missions tend to go wrong at some point. They don't tend to go wrong before they even leave the base, however. Pre-ESB, Han/Leia.
1. Chapter 1

_**Author's Note:**_ _This will be a four-part story updated on Fridays. Language warnings apply. And one last thing: please remember that fanfic is freely written and freely given. Reviews are most certainly welcome. Thank you, my friends!_

* * *

 **Part One:**

It was a celebration of sorts.

An improvised bar, a few Rogues, the crew of the _Millennium Falcon,_ a couple hands of Sabacc. If anyone bothered to ask why the impromptu celebration had occurred, Han Solo would be hard-pressed to give a credible reason for it. Someone's mission had been a success. They had alcohol. They were still alive. Take your pick. They didn't need much of a reason.

Their little enclave of the Alliance was stationed on a planet only designated by the alphanumeric P-X77. It was awful: a muggy atmosphere, humid, dank and home to the galaxy's largest species of flying insect. Han felt like he was sweating from the inside-out, like he was constantly wearing a sodden coat. They ran drills in the morning before dawn or after sunset when the troops weren't drowning in their own sweat. All technology had to be adjusted for moisture-retention. Everyone was miserable. Everyone.

The worst part was that they'd spent more time at this base than any other since Han had started smuggling for the Alliance. In the past two years, they'd lived in much more comfortable bases that had been discovered and abandoned in a matter of months. But this hellhole? Damn Imperials couldn't find it with a map and two good hands. Han half-expected a jaded Alliance recruit to put out a distress signal to the local moff just to force an evacuation. He was tempted to do it himself.

So it wasn't a surprise that the elite of Alliance Starfighter Command overran his galley the day before the _Falcon_ was scheduled to depart for Eretraa. The group had over twenty years of combat experience and four sober brain cells between them. Han felt a little like a chaperone at an Academy party: watching with mild amusement as their youth and vigor spilled all over his limited entertainment area. The kids were sprawled out over the holochess table and the booth around it, loudly talking over each other and tossing back any and all alcohol they could find. Han was miffed to see his secret stash of Corellian whiskey had been found and pilfered in the raid on his galley.

Upon entering the galley, Chewie had taken one look at the assembly, huffed something about finding a drink suitable for a Wookiee and left for his cabin. And so Han was alone with the kids, drinking him out of ship and home and not giving a damn about it.

He sat at the navigation console, his back to the equipment and his feet propped up on a spare shipping container he'd brought into the hold for that exact purpose. He regarded the scene in front of him with nostalgic amusement and remembered nights like this one from a different life, from what felt like a completely different person.

How in the ever-loving fuck had he survived to be the semi-responsible adult in a situation like this? It beggared belief.

"Are you degenerates going to restock my liquor before I take off tomorrow?" he asked, good-natured and with a knowing lift to his eyebrow.

The nearest said degenerate—a kid named Wes Janson that Han had only met last month—grinned like an idiot from his place at the holochess table. "Nope."

"Serves you right," Wedge Antilles said. "Charging us for your services."

Hobbie Klivian nodded. "Rebels share."

Han rolled his eyes but threw a container of Argin nuts at the group nonetheless. If the kids didn't get some food in them, they'd still be drunk when they reported for duty in the early afternoon. "Good thing I'm not a rebel, then. I'd go broke."

More broke than he already was, that is.

The last of the freeloaders shuffled around the bend in the ring corridor, overhearing Han's last remark. Daybreak had found Luke Skywalker a little drunk, a lot exhausted and very amused at his squadron mates as they congregated in the _Falcon_ 's galley. With bleary eyes, he turned his head and grinned at Han.

"Oh, shut it," Luke said. "We've been hearing it for two years now."

The kid was filling out, Han thought as he watched Luke take a seat on an overturned crate. Sandy hair spilled over his head in the usual mop and his eyes were tinged with just enough world-weariness to mark him as a seasoned soldier. His face looked thinner to Han, too. The farmboy had seen and done things that the wet-behind-the-ears nobody Han had picked up at Mos Eisley could never have imagined. Confronting the reality of warfare and experiencing the loss of people you knew took their toll on the most genuine of people.

Han took a swig from his ale, grimaced when he realized it was empty. "You'll _keep_ hearing it if you continue stealing from respectable businessmen."

The group laughed and even Han had to grin. Though he didn't want to admit it, he knew they were right. They would drink his liquor and he'd find a moment to restock it when he was off-base. Then he'd groan with good grace the next time they all managed a collective night off and drank him dry. This was a pattern: not one he'd ever given permission for, but certainly the way things went down with the Alliance.

"Sharing with you animals feels a lot like robbery, if you ask me," Han continued.

Luke threw Han an indignant look. "We do not rob."

"Rebels share," Hobbie helpfully repeated.

Han launched himself from the nav station and ambled into the galley. They really _were_ kids: ten years younger than him in most cases. Full of hopeful idealism and eagerness to save the galaxy. Luke was the most seasoned one of the bunch.

God _damn_. How things had changed in just a few years.

Despite that, they were fun to have around, though it'd be nice to hang onto a bottle of whiskey for more than a couple weeks. And it was kind of nice to have a place for them to relax. There sure as hell wasn't a decent mess hall anywhere on this dump of a planet. And even if they _had_ one, it wouldn't serve alcohol.

Come to think of it, maybe the problem with most of the Alliance bases was a lack of booze. At least on Carida there'd been cantinas nearby to dull the inevitable ethical crises one dealt with at the Academy.

"So Eretraa, huh?" Wedge said, interrupting Han's train of thought. "That's a sweet run."

Han grunted, reaching into the recently renovated cooling unit for more ice. "It ain't sweet. It'll be boring as hell."

"If it isn't crash landing and being stranded for three weeks, it's _boring as hell_ ," Luke quoted. "You need a different rubric for excitement, Han."

"I got a great rubric for excitement," Han insisted, crossing his arms over his chest. "And I crash landed _once._ That isn't even a record in this room."

"Twice," Wes corrected, holding up two fingers.

Han thought back, then shook his head. "No, the other one doesn't count. That was Leia's fault."

A loud chorus followed his proclamation. Several voices chimed in at once, a wave of contradictions that bounced off the hull like the bass of a jizz band. The immediate blowback caught Han by surprise though he didn't move a muscle. He'd be damned if he showed any such shock in front of the kids.

" _Leia's fault_ ," Hobbie crowed louder than the others. "It's always _Leia's fault_."

Han opened his hands, work-roughed palms up and fingers splayed. He wasn't sure what the Rogues were up to, but it sure as hell sounded like they were hitting on a familiar point. He knew about their betting pool; he knew about their asinine speculations. The only reason they were vaguely hinting at it now was because they were drunk. And if not truly drunk, they were too uninhibited for their usual slightly-awed fear of him.

It also sounded strange to hear someone beside Han and Luke say _Leia_. Everyone else stuck to _Her Highness_ or _Princess._ If they were addressing her directly, she was often _Ma'am._ Han understood why, of course: the woman inspired her own brand of awe. And he couldn't blame the guys for that awe; he'd experienced the feeling more than once while on missions with her. Hell, he'd experienced it the first day he'd met her, when she'd grabbed Luke's blaster and shot them an escape route into a garbage compactor.

He'd told Luke that Leia _had a lot of spirit._ There was much more than just her spirit to admire. Woman had courage enough for ten Alliances and was ballsy enough to inspire it in others.

Han made a point to never use her proper honorifics as a matter of pride, not because he didn't think she deserved them. It wasn't his style to call anyone _ma'am,_ except in a few very specific circumstances relating to …. things he hadn't done with Leia.

 _Yet,_ his less-than-chivalrous nature whispered.

That thought spiralled into a dozen others that he quickly tried to suppress. He knew that path well and now was not the time to obsess over a woman he had absolutely no hope in seducing. No matter how tantalizing she was. Or courageous. Or brilliant.

Han scowled. "Of course it's always her fault. Her missions somehow go wrong nine times out of ten. Those odds speak for themselves."

"So she's…. What? Crash landing you on purpose?" Wes asked,

"Maybe."

Luke pointed a finger at Han. "You were the one that got caught on Manna Ki."

Han exhaled his breath in a huff. "I didn't get caught. I got jumped waiting for Her Worship to get the rest of the manifests from her contact."

The minute Han had met Leia's contact on Manna Ki he hadn't trusted him. The slimeball had stared at her breasts with such naked intent that Han had considered bashing his head in as a shot across the bow. He knew that was a gross overreaction and he hadn't breathed a word of it to Leia. But as he'd waited for her to return from her second meeting with the lecherous slug, Han had recalibrated the sight on the DL-44. Just in case the creep had gotten handsy with his princess.

 _The_ princess. _The._ Not _his._

"If she'd stuck to the timeline we would have been long gone before the Imps showed up," Han hurried to add. "Manna Ki was all on her."

"What about the time the _Falcon_ got stranded in interstellar space without supplies?" Wedge asked. "Pretty sure the princess isn't in charge of stocking your ship."

"That could happen to anybody."

"But it doesn't happen to anybody. It happens to you and Leia," Luke said. He was still pointing the damn finger. "I've gone on plenty of missions with her and I haven't once had to blast my way out of a spice den."

"Hey, now—" Han started.

"Or nearly died from some crazy new disease that Two-One-Bee ended up naming after you," Hobbie added.

"—That was not my fault!"

"Or taken hostage by some weird prince who wanted to marry her," Wes said.

Well, fuck. They had him there. From across the galley, Luke had the good grace to look sheepish. He'd been part of that mission, too, and there had been an escalation when the prince ordered their deaths as a show of strength for the woman he thought was his betrothed. Luke had been amused; Han had been homicidal. The situation had only devolved from there.

Han cocked an eyebrow at Luke, silently blaming the younger man for what Han knew had been his own fault.

Oblivious to the silent look between Han and Luke, Wedge raised his glass as if he were going to make a toast. "Hobbie and I took her to a drop-off on Sullust last week with no problem. It was really nice. She bought us a drink while we waited for her."

"Good for you," Han said.

He poured himself a shot of whiskey, not nearly drunk enough for this discussion. The Rogues clearly thought they knew something. Han was sure they were just fishing around for information. They couldn't know; nobody knew. Except Chewie, who had been forcibly quieted by virtue of his life debt. And that was how it was going to stay. Until this _whatever it was_ between his fantasies and the last princess of Alderaan cooled off, no one would know.

He'd made sure of that.

Luke's slightly-glassy eyes found Han's again, and that infernal finger was back, wagging in Han's direction like the kid was saying something new. "You have to admit that things don't go the way they're supposed to when the two of you work together," he said.

"What do you know?" Han said, and tossed back his whiskey. It burned down his throat and settled in his chest: a nice, dry heat.

He had no control over viruses that infected them on strange worlds, or on crazy princes in marriage-heat. Rather than dumping all the blame on him, perhaps they should congratulate him for surviving the missions at all. Not a single one of these kids could've made it out of some of those scrapes.

Leia only commissioned Han for the worst of the worst missions on the Alliance docket. The ones no one else would take. The ones for which normal, sane people didn't sign up. When she needed to do something truly dangerous, when her objective required a wide skill set and the fastest ship in the galaxy, she called him up. Simple. By the very nature of those missions, they were doomed to some sort of failure. That Han and Leia survived at all was a miracle. Half the time the mission departure sheet didn't even bother to list a return date next to their names. It just said: _Leia Organa, Han Solo, Chewbacca, ETA unknown._

Which in military slang meant something like: _yeah, good luck with that. Pal._

"Don't get testy, Solo. We're just pointing out the facts," Hobbie said.

Han scowled and stared daggers at his shot glass. "You take her to nice, calm worlds like Sullust and I wind up in fucking Lagalos with no food and lots of cannibals." Han was pissed, past the point of caring. " _Cannibals._ I get called in for the shady shit. Not my fault the woman has me starring in her death wish."

Janson eyed Han with a drunken sageness that would have been funny if the conversation had been about anything else. Wes crawled up the back of the booth and lugged his feet onto the game table. His boots made an audible _clunk_ and Han grimaced at the flecks of mud that flew everywhere.

"No, my friend," Janson said. "Not a death wish. A _shag_ wish."

Han was thrown for a moment, the word _shag_ such an immature term for _fuck_ that it took him a moment to process what Janson was saying. How long had it been since someone had used the word _shag_ in front of him? Seemed like decades.

Once he connected the dots, Han spread his hands wide in self-proclamation. "Can you blame her?"

Bravado and brashness had carried him through much of his adult life. If there was one thing Han Solo knew, it was how to be insufferably cocky until people believed in the persona he gave them. It was a front, an intentional deception, and it had served him well from the streets of Corellia to the cantinas on Nar Shaddaa.

It wasn't any different from, say, inflating his Imperial capture reward by a few million credits when meeting with a dangerous contact. Similarly ridiculous but useful. Sometimes the only thing he'd had to his name had been his confidence, no matter how false it might be.

So who would blame Leia for wanting to fuck him? Honestly, _he would._ She was smarter than that.

Janson wasn't finished, though, sensing blood in the water and diving in for the kill. "But the princess isn't the interesting one here. _You_ , Solo, have been acting all sorts of strange lately."

Han dropped his hands to his sides and leaned back against the hull. He glanced at Luke without thinking, checking the kid's reaction. Luke hid his mouth behind his hand but didn't hide the amusement in his eyes.

"Like the time you let her land the _Falcon,"_ Hobbie said.

Wedge crossed his arms over his chest. "You threatened to push me out an open airlock the one time I offered to take her into lightspeed."

"I might still do it," Han grumbled. "Any of you fools stop to think she's just plain better at the controls than you?"

Another round of loud denials, the Rogues' own brand of confidence echoing around the hold. Han found it amusing that even in responding to an affront to their piloting skills—an offense that could get you killed on Corellia if you weren't careful—not a single one of them disputed Leia's capability at the helm. They were just as proficient at their own bluster as he was in his, in their own way. Their protest was edged with good humor, underlined with the full respect Leia deserved.

Luke's voice rose to the top of the pack. "That's low, Han."

"And speaking of you _,"_ he pointed to Luke. "If anyone is guilty of anything regarding Her Worship, it's _you_."

Han caught the delighted, shocked faces of the four barely-men sitting at his table. Janson muttered a quiet _oh shit._ Hobbie's mouth gaped wide, looking ridiculous, and his eyes shined bright with gleefully surprised humor. Wedge looked like a spectator at a smashball game, head rotating back and forth between Han and Luke as he tried to catch all of the signals between them.

But Han was looking squarely at Luke. And Han was not amused.

The kid was growing up, sure: that was obvious. Han and Chewie had invested a lot of good time and money in getting him up to speed. Drinking and gambling and the rest of the fun an older brother would have helped with: that was their role in this party. Luke was uninitiated in the more scandalous things in life, but his damn homeworld and relative isolationism had made it difficult for him to truly partake in the fun. And there had always been a part of Han that wanted Luke to experience adult entertainment in the safe way Han himself hadn't had growing up.

But Han wasn't so sold on Luke that he couldn't call the kid out on his hypocrisy.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Luke said, opening his hands and looking like a saint. "Leia is my friend."

Han put his hands on his hips. "Bullshit. You fought me on it the first day I met you, Kid."

Luke's eyes flashed. Han couldn't tell if it was from embarrassment or anger, but the chill that swept down his spine warned him that if he pressed the issue Luke might not react well. This was not the first time they'd referenced the silent gentlemen's agreement they had about Leia. Han decided to back off, leave the pissing contest alone for the moment. He could take the heat and let it roll off his back. It looked like Luke might be feeling a bit sensitive about it at the moment.

Unfortunately Luke's mates didn't have the same understanding as Han and Luke had.

"Whoa!" Janson said, eyes glued to Luke. "You pulled rank on Solo on day one, Boss?"

"Balls of _durasteel,_ man," Hobbie added.

Luke didn't move a muscle but said, "I didn't know any better. He was pretty much stuck in jerk mode that day."

"Yeah, well," Han grumbled.

Leia had tested his nerves and not a damn thing had gone to plan on Luke's charter. Between the two of them—and Chewie's instant love for them both, the traitor—he'd had no patience for any of it. Ferrying a crazy old man and his young sidekick hadn't seemed like much work when they'd started but by the time Leia had started yelling, he had been done with the lot of them.

"Besides," Luke continued, "I bowed out of that fight a long time ago."

All Han could manage was a sneer. "Sure, Kid."

It wasn't that easy to stop aiming for Leia. Han knew that intimately. She had a habit of sticking around his head, coloring the inside of his eyelids. She hung around every fantasy, insinuated herself into each and every last one until he couldn't _stop_ thinking about her. Every word she spoke, every look she gave, every time she pulled a blaster or commanded a group or risked her life, he was ... lost.

And the quiet things did him in, too. The hand that flew to her hair when he startled her, like it was her most prized possession. Her big, brown eyes: equal parts fierce and kind. The low pitch of her voice in those sporadic moments of quiet friendship, the one that wrapped around him like a cool breeze and made him feel important in the galaxy.

So the kid was lying through his teeth if he was saying she wasn't doing the exact same thing to him.

"No, really. That ship launched months ago," Luke pressed. "She's just my friend."

Han stared at Luke, trying to comprehend how the kid had managed the impossible. _Bowed out of the fight?_ Meaning he'd stopped mooning over the princess? What the hell kind of Jedi magic was this?

Part of him was jealous; it'd be nice to get a decent night's sleep without first jerking off to images of the most infuriating woman in the galaxy. He honestly couldn't imagine.

And that was the most terrible thing about Luke finding reprieve from the chase. They'd both known it was a battle neither of them would win. They knew that she had her own agenda, her own life, and that she wasn't interested in playing any games with them. It hadn't been a contest. It hadn't been a _fight._ It'd been mutual frustration that this woman—this incredible woman—was so far from either of their orbits that being unintentionally plagued by her was a communal weight. Everyone was in love with Leia and no one had any right to be.

But if Luke had figured out how to be just her friend, then Han was alone in that hell.

Deep in his own thoughts, Han only came to his senses when Chewie's lumbering footfalls reached him. The Wookiee growled and leaned against the hull closest to Han.

"We were just listening to Luke lie about chasing Leia," Han answered him. "Says he gave up the fight."

Luke shook his head. "Look, she's alone a lot. I figured she didn't need both of us pawing all over her all the time."

The Rogues cackled, and Han suddenly remembered that there were more people on the _Falcon_ than just him, Luke and Chewie. Jarred, he watched the three pilots throw their hands in the air and make out like their commander had pulled a bottle of Whyren's Reserve out of his pocket. They hollered loud enough to reach outside the _Falcon_ 's hulls where the morning shift was just about to begin.

Beneath the din, Chewie growled quietly: a warning. Han ignored him and pointed an innocent finger at himself. "I don't paw all over her."

"Right," Wes said.

Hobbie could barely breathe, he was laughing so hard. "Sure."

"Whatever you say, Han," Wedge finished.

The trio of hypocrites. This was ridiculous. _He_ pawed all over her? He was only one on this fucking rock that treated her like a person. Who put her on a pedestal, who thought she was made of glass, ready to break at the first sign of trouble? Not him. Never him.

He fought with her and pushed her buttons and made her feel like everyone else. He was probably the only one on base who felt guilt for his attraction to her. Beneath all of their chemistry, their spectacular pyrotechnics, she truly was his friend, somehow and without permission.

Maybe that was why he was so pissed at Luke. Jealousy. How was Luke able to stop feeling that attraction to Leia? Had the kid escaped the ensuing guilt that came with being half in love with her? The kind that confused Han, because he'd never before felt the need to suppress his baser instincts. It took him hours to suppress the effect she had on him and fucking _Luke_ could just shrug it off?

How? _How?_

"I'm no worse than the rest of you," he said, anger lacing his tone. "You all want to fuck her just as much as I do. You're just too intimidated to show it."

Luke shrugged and Wedge eyed them both. "I think you're both crazy. The princess has better things to do than sleep with any of us."

"That's right," a rich female voice said from Han's right. "I do."

Silence. Full, complete, pregnant silence. Gaping mouths, wide eyes, the weighted feeling of being caught. A running undercurrent of _oh, shit, oh, fuck, what did she hear?_

Shame. So much shame.

Han shut his eyes. He'd heard the footsteps too late. What word had he used? _Shag,_ right? Not _fuck,_ please not _fuck—_

He felt Chewie bristle next to him, shifting weight from one foot to the other in an uncharacteristic display of discomfort. The air became heavy around them, freezing in the climate-controlled environment of the _Falcon._ A deep unease rooted them to their spots: no one moved.

 _What did she hear?_

Han opened his eyes. The Rogues stared at him with varying degrees of shock on their faces. Janson looked downright sick. Chewie turned around and grunted softly to their early morning visitor.

Leia Organa stood in the corridor, feet planted wide and hands loose at her sides. Her hair was tied into a sharp braid that disappeared from view down her back. She pursed her lips, the picture of cool impenetrability, but her eyes were angry, livid. Brighter than the fluorescent lights above their heads. She took in their faces one by one, shrewd and discerning. Han had the impression she was making a list. Leia liked lists. She was always making lists, even in disastrous situations, even in the midst of blaster bolts and stormtroopers.

This was not a good list to be on.

The only one who seemed totally at ease with the newcomer was Luke. He waved a hand and said brightly, "Hi, Leia."

"I'm sorry to interrupt your—" she seemed to struggle for a word, "—your rec time. But I need Captain Solo's signature on this transfer manifest."

She held out a datapad to him. Her hand was steady, but he couldn't tell if that was because she really wasn't affected by what she'd heard or if she was compensating the gross violation with pure Organa grit.

Her wide eyes locked onto his. Big, brown and hurt. Another wave of shame washed over him as he took the datapad from her, deep and biting. She'd heard him. He could tell by the look she was giving him, the depth of control she was maintaining over her reactions. She'd heard him say he wanted to fuck her, that they all wanted to fuck her, and this was like watching a door slam shut.

Because, yes, she starred in every single one of his fantasies: every night, all the time. But so had other people before her. Fantasies weren't new.

The difference was that sometimes he fantasized about waking up next to her and tracing the cascade of hair running down the pillow beneath her head. Or the one where she locked eyes with him while she was giving her daily briefs and just smiled at him. Like she was genuinely happy to see him there.

Last week he caught himself thinking of what it felt like when she talked with him. Sometimes it happened like that on missions before things turned ugly. They just talked. And she looked so beautiful and she was just so fucking smart and didn't need a damned soul to do anything for her. So capable. God, he loved that.

But she hadn't heard him say any of those things. She'd heard him casually identify her as something to be fucked. It played into every terrible persona he'd tried to be with her. The ones he'd stopped using. And suddenly he was afraid he'd been too good at it for her to believe any differently of him.

He signed the manifest and handed the datapad to her but still couldn't think of anything to say. Chewie made a soft noise next to Han, urging him to fix the situation _._ But Han's brain wasn't working at any calculable speed. He didn't have a thought in his head that wasn't _no, please._

"Thank you," she said.

Han watched her leave: one small silhouette walking through the ring corridor. It wasn't until he heard Wedge exhale that Han's brain snapped into action. He rocketed forward, following her through the corridor, fists clenched and without a single cogent thought in his head.

In the docking bay the wide cavern bustled with tired mechanics. A deckhand slapped Han's back as he jogged toward Leia, but Han didn't respond. He was intent on the woman in front of him. Her small stride was hurried, syncopated footsteps on the deck plating. Uneven. Her hand gripped the datapad to her chest. She looked so small among the Alliance war machine, so stark an irony that she took his breath away.

"Hey, Leia. Wait!" he shouted.

She stopped and turned to him, datapad still clutched in her hand. "I have much to do before we take off tomorrow, Captain Solo."

He felt sick, shame and disgust heavy in his chest. Battered, he tried to make sense of her expression, the odd look in her eyes as she stared at him.

When he didn't immediately answer, she blinked and then turned, ready to walk away. A rush of adrenaline flooded his system and before he knew what he was going to say, his mouth was open and he was talking.

"I know, but, uh," he faltered, "That wasn't … you weren't supposed to hear–"

She sighed and turned around again to face him as he trailed off. She looked at him, really looked at him: her eyes a mess of anger, hurt and stubbornness. Smothered fire, almost. He was struck by the naked emotion of it, like she could flip a switch and suddenly she was human. How often did she keep the switch unflipped? His ribcage felt too small for his lungs, breathing too fast at the thought of such control.

"It's nothing I haven't heard before," she said. Her tone was dismissive but her eyes were still captivating in the worst way possible: disappointment, shame and acceptance hot in her small body.

Without another word she turned and strode out of the docking bay, steps now even and sure, arms swinging with the datapad locked in her right hand. Energy crackled beneath the line of her back. Han watched her until she disappeared, swallowed by the Command Center's walls, and felt the bald face of self-disgust envelope him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Part Two:**

It was the most awkward flight Leia had ever experienced on the _Millennium Falcon_. That included her first trip, in which she'd been recently liberated from a garbage compactor and had insulted all her rescuers in the space of thirty minutes.

 _Walking carpet,_ she'd said. Leia shook her head. She still felt terrible about that particular jab.

Despite her anger and the emotional disassociation she'd felt during the escape from the Death Star, she'd recognized the forced half-geniality that permeated every corner of the ship on that flight. Each conversation she'd had was uncomfortable for a host of different reasons: simmering anger from Han, devastation from Luke and fierce self-denial from Leia. A perfect storm of emotional outbursts. It'd been awful on her raw nerves; by that point the effect of her adrenaline had faded. And though she'd tried to spit fire, her heart had been shattered. Even her anger had felt hollow.

The trip to Eretraa had proven worse in some ways. Han was quiet and Chewbacca even more so. They'd run their start-up sequence in near silence, only communicating with each other for important system checks. Gone was the familiar banter, the friendly potshot. The crew of the _Falcon_ operated like droids, systematic and single-minded. What wasn't being said could have filled the _Falcon_ 's main hold three times over.

Strapped into the navigator's chair with Luke in the seat next to her, Leia felt at first thankful and then increasingly uncomfortable as she realized what they were projecting. Luke and Chewie seemed to be reacting to Han's guilt, doubling it and feeding it back to him in droves. Han's shoulders were curved inward and his eyes never quite reached her face.

Part of her—the ugliest, nastiest part—liked that Han Solo reacted so strongly to the awful things he had said the previous morning. It was surprising. He had so much confidence, so much bravado, that she would have expected his embarrassment to manifest in anger. His awkwardness was fascinating, one of the most genuine emotional responses she'd ever seen from him.

He should be embarrassed. Anyone with a vague sense of decency would be, too. His words had been a terrible, crude, sexist way of objectifying her, sexualizing her, ripping her away from her position in the Alliance and debasing her. There was no redemption or forgiveness for that moment and she would not give absolution for it.

It wasn't the first time she'd overheard such blatantly offensive sentiments in her life, and she'd learned to feel the hurt and then move on. She'd watched her mother do the same, and the other female Imperial senators, too. Even Mon Mothma had had a similar incident last year as she toured an Alliance base. Honestly, she'd be hard-pressed to find a woman who hadn't learned the art of outrage/move on. It wasn't a part of their DNA but definitely part of their education.

What was interesting was that Han did not seem to have done the same. She could cut the shame in the air with a knife. His response was …. Gratifying. Powerful. She appreciated it for its terrible purity, its horrified honesty. She'd suppressed so much of her own emotional responses in recent history that his discomfort was endearing.

Leia might have relieved him of its weight had she been a better person. But she wasn't. The sting of hearing those words from him hadn't been soothed yet. In time, perhaps. For now, the dam was still up.

"When will we arrive?" she asked.

Han turned his head but didn't make eye contact with her. "Three hours, give or take."

"Why _give or take?_ " Luke asked.

"We're running through a tough area," Han answered. "The Spinal Arm has a few hot spots. We should avoid them, but it's not a given."

Leia pursed her lips. "Which hot spots? I've heard no intel about Imperials in the Spinal Arm."

Chewie grumbled, his low growls sounding accusatory. Leia watched the Wookiee shake his head and then turned her attention back to Han.

"Not Imperials," the smuggler said.

He didn't expound on his answer and Leia let it lie despite her confusion. She assumed he meant pirates—while she hadn't heard of Imperials in the Arm, it was a well-known haven for criminals—and turned back to Luke.

"Caf?" she asked, unlatching her safety harness.

Luke nodded and followed her out of the cockpit hatch without another word to their pilots. Leia pressed her hand into the braid snaking down her shoulder and adjusted her tunic. The bright blue of the shirt-dress billowed around her, drowning her in fabric but leaving her legs exposed to the chill of interstellar travel. Given the choice, she would have worn her typical form-fitting, Alliance-issue fatigues but this mission required a delicate cultural touch.

The corridor opened into the galley, bright lights dimmed to a more conservative glow, and Leia walked straight to the caf machine. Behind her Luke sat at the holochess table, easing back into a relaxed pose and watching her fill two mugs.

"Could you bring some sweetener?" he asked, innocent blue eyes wide.

Leia shook her head, though the requested container was already in her hand. "Disgusting," she said without looking at him, shaking the sweetener in her fist. "Caf is supposed to be hot and bitter. You're missing the point by adding this."

"Give me a break. We didn't have caf on Tatooine," Luke said.

She gave him an odd look as she rounded the corner, mugs in hand and the container of sweetener tucked in her elbow. "Too hot?" she guessed.

"Wasted water," Luke said. "You don't drink dehydrating liquids in a desert."

Leia hummed and sat opposite him, pushing a mug and the sweetener across the table. "Then be my guest. Ruin your caf all you want."

Luke grinned, a pure, happy look as he poured an indecent amount of sweetener into his caf. Leia scowled but lifted her own mug to her lips, watching the shameful display in front of her. Her mug was yellow and a little broken: smaller than Luke's, smaller than any of the rest of the mugs aboard the _Falcon._ It had a chip on one side that she avoided; she didn't know how her mug had sustained such an injury but she thought it gave it character, a history. Like a relic from a myth or a family heirloom.

Han had given it to her last year. He'd told her someone's assigned mug should resemble their personality. She'd been delighted in his choice: small, bright and slightly damaged. It'd been a remarkably accurate representation and though she knew anyone else might be offended, she'd been pleased and had hugged him quickly in gratitude.

She paused and lifted her lips from the mug, then blinked and took another sip.

"About this mission," Luke began.

She nodded and set her mug down. "You want to know what you're doing?"

"No," he said, "I know what I'm doing. I'd like to know how to not get myself killed while doing it."

She waved a hand. "Oh, that's simple."

Luke just waited, a look of challenge on his face. She stared back, an eyebrow raised, watching as he brought his mug to his lips and, unblinking, took another sip. Leia wrinkled her nose and broke eye contact, laughing softly.

Immensely pleased with himself, Luke saluted her with his mug. "And so?"

Leia leaned back in her seat, still chuckling. "The Alliance intelligence cell is expecting you. Just avoid the stormtroopers and you'll be fine."

She was being flippant, presenting Luke's directive as a simple first-contact mission with an Alliance spy cell. _Simple_ was not the word Dodonna had used. Eretraa was sparsely populated but those that were there were Imperial loyalists and congregated in the planet's largest city, Porte. What the city lacked in sophistication they made up for in communication-wire production: a speciality that kept the planet from falling out of Imperial favor. The planet supplied wire for nearly the entire fleet.

But Eretraa also had a small, dedicated Alliance intelligence-gathering network. The more loyal a planet was to the Empire, the more likely an Alliance cell existed there, and this one had been more fruitful than most. Trafficking in communication frequencies afforded by the newest technology available on Eretraa, the cell had sent a distress signal three days ago, claiming they needed help relocating to a more secure location.

Leia was the primary contact in the mission, experienced with this particular cell and the logistics in intelligence protocol. But Eretraa's strict patriarchy and deep misogyny prevented her from roaming around at night in Porte. Frustrated and angry, Leia had recruited Luke to be her proxy for the first contact and their scout. Once he found a reliable route into the cell, she would go and help set up the new network.

"How large is the Imperial presence there?" Luke asked.

"Not large," she said, dismissive. "A division. You'll be fine."

Luke's mouth gaped. "A _division?_ That's a thousand soldiers, Leia."

"You'll be fine," she repeated, taking a sip of her caf. "Establish contact, find me a route in and then come back and keep Han from doing anything stupid. Easy."

"That last one might be the hardest part," he said with a rueful grin. "Are you going to let him off the hook before I go out on my not-suicidal mission?"

Leia eyed Luke over the lip of her mug, mouth hidden. He stared back, wonderfully innocent and devious all at once. She cut her eyes to the side and set down her mug, aware that Luke was watching her every move, collecting her responses.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she answered after a beat.

"Oh, c'mon," Luke said, rolling his eyes. "You're torturing him. He didn't mean it."

"Didn't mean what? The part about wanting to have sex with me? Or the part about everyone else wanting to have sex with with me?"

 _Wanting to have sex with me,_ Leia thought. What an odd re-phrasing. He'd said _fuck._ But saying that word in front of Luke felt low, felt too base, even though he'd been there to hear the original sentiment straight from Han's lips.

Her heart twinged. She ignored it.

"Leia," Luke said, softer now. Gentle. Good, kind Luke. "Han was reacting to something I said and the guys were all over him. I'm sure if you talked to him, he could explain—"

"I have no intention of letting him explain," she interrupted.

"No, I know. But Han wasn't being… He wouldn't hurt you."

Leia nodded. "I know that. That's not the problem."

Luke closed his mouth and tilted his head in question.

Leia sighed and tried to find the words she wanted. "Luke, I've done a great deal in my life to be taken seriously. And I would argue that it's taken me more time and more energy than any of the men I've worked with simply because I'm a woman."

He dropped his eyes.

She continued, softening her tone. "And no matter how much I do, I can never escape the men who only see me as a sexual object. And it's worse when the people I trust underscore those same views. I'm used to it. I can handle it. But it never stops being hurtful."

"So it's not the words themselves?" Luke asked, looking up. "Its because _Han_ said them?"

Leia didn't react. She took another sip of her caf and watched Luke's eyes. They moved side to side, as if he were reading. Unfocused, his gaze slipped to the hull behind her shoulder. She sat back and let him absorb his own thoughts while the edge of terror creeped into her calm. Surely she'd been better at hiding her pain than that? Of course she had; she was no novice to this.

Leia shook her head and took another sip of her caf.

"I want to ask you something but I'm a little scared you'll misinterpret it," he said, breaking the pregnant pause.

Leia leaned back, ran one thumb over the other and waited, offering no guarantees.

Luke took a breath. "Is it possible that you might have feelings for Han? And that's why it bothers you so much?"

She froze. The durasteel in her spine went rigid, the ice in her veins crystallized, her lungs seized.

He knew.

In her quieter moments, nestled into herself and with all her wants and fears enwrapping her like a shroud, Leia could acknowledge that, _yes,_ she had feelings for Han Solo. Fiery, obsessive, possessive feelings. Feelings that sat in the lowest part of her stomach and raged at her better nature, sending gaping holes up through her body and into her chest.

Dangerous feelings. Treacherous feelings.

Rationality didn't intrude in that space. She was sensation and desire and nothing else. And to that Leia—the dim, dark one of selfishness and gross freedom—the spectre of Han loomed large. His hands, the rippled skin of his arms. The long expanse of his neck that she wanted to taste. The rolling swagger in his hips as he walked away from her, engendering terrible mysteries about thrusts and sweat and the power of his lips. The hoarse depths of his voice: what could she make him say? What beautiful sound could she elicit, could she feel with her mouth pressed against his throat?

Those feelings were animalistic, her lowest consciousness. She understood them, had experienced them before. Human nature, hormones and the product of her species' desperate cling to survival. Nothing to fear.

But that didn't explain the most horrible of realities; when Han looked at her, smiled at her, talked to her in a calm, friendly voice, the reaction reversed itself. Pangs of longing struck the inner walls of her lungs and shot down to her belly. That was not a primal genetic imperative. That was connection. Fierce, consuming attraction to his mind, his perspective. Admiration for his strength of spirit. A nettling fixation to understand his history, his personality, the sharp edges of his psyche and the softer lines beneath them.

And if her sexual attraction to Han was dangerous, _these_ feelings were fatal.

"What makes you ask that?" she replied. Repress. Move on. Hide.

Luke shrugged. "I don't know. I just—"

Heavy footfalls echoed around the area and Luke stopped mid-sentence as Han stepped into view, wiping his hands on his pants. His hair, while always mussed, was particularly insubordinate today, tufts sticking up at the crown of his head and near his temples.

"We're clear," he said. "We'll reach Eretraa in three hours."

Leia nodded, tipped the rest of her caf into her mouth and then left the hold without a word to either Luke or Han.

XXX

It took him longer than she expected to seek her out. She sat on a cot in the crew cabin, eyes on her datapad, craving solitude and a modicum of personal space. On this freighter both were a rare commodity and she knew someone would eventually interrupt her.

Leia set down the datapad and sighed. She had a hunch that Han would try and defuse some of the awkwardness between them before they landed. Despite his posturing, he'd demonstrated a clear head in times of stress and nothing endangered a mission faster than a lack of trust. They had a long history of terrifically compromised missions together and she knew he would never purposely put her or Luke in harm's way. If he had ever harbored a secret desire to see her hurt or killed, it would have happened already. Her physical safety was guaranteed.

She swallowed, the rising tide of hurt threatening to overwhelm her.

Leia trusted Han with her life with complete conviction and trust. There was no doubt that he would do anything to ensure her safety. The entire galaxy was filled with unknown questions but she would confidently stake her life and reputation on Han's protection. He fulfilled a very specific purpose and she would be grateful for his assistance. That was it.

A traitorous tightening of her stomach. _You lie to yourself, Leia,_ she thought.

"Hey."

She looked up to the open hatch where Han stood, hands on his hips and a pinched look on his face. His hair fell into his eyes and he seemed to be forcing himself to stand still. Untapped energy ran under his skin, volatile but restrained by sheer force of will.

"Hello," she answered. "Can I help you?"

Oh _,_ but her tone was perfect. Equally cold and weighted: consonants clipped, steady and true.

"I wanted to talk to you," he said.

She regarded him for a moment, already knowing she would let him speak if he wanted but tempted to let the tension eat him up a while longer. She nodded slowly and he walked through the hatch until he stood above her, towering. She held his eye and he seemed to realize that his position wasn't right, a little too intimidating or forceful and totally inappropriate for the subject he was there to discuss with her. Pressing his lips together, he sat too far away, nearly off the end of the cot, and put his elbows on his knees.

"About yesterday," he said. He turned his head to look at her but didn't say anything more.

She waited for him to continue, silence twisting between them like a live wire. When he didn't continue, she crossed her legs and said, "Yes?"

He clasped his hands between his knees. "I think I owe you an apology. What you heard wasn't, uh, pretty. Or good. Or whatever."

She hummed but didn't give him any other signals. He was a smart man; he needed to figure this out on his own. Her job was to present the right facade, and she could do that expertly.

"Look," he said, opening his hands and starting to gesture in wide, unnecessary movements, like he needed something to distract her from what he was saying. "That was shit-talking, that's all. The kind of thing guys say when they're around other guys. And you snuck up on us and didn't let me explain—"

"I thought this was an apology?" she interrupted, gritting her teeth against a ready diatribe about what human male shit-talking could do. As far as she was concerned, civilized adult men should know better. Even out of earshot. Even while drunk. Period.

He groaned. "You aren't making it any easier on me."

On him? Leia wanted to laugh. What about the past day had been hard _on him_? Was it terribly difficult to be free and sarcastic and irreverent? Was it so difficult to be adored by males and females alike, to walk around base as if all eyes were on him all the time? To have names of people on a list to _fuck_ while Leia's own had only one name, underlined four times and desperate with silent longing?

"Me? What did I do?"

He gestured again, left hand flying in her direction. "You're being …. _You._ "

Leia furrowed her brow. "And who would you like me to be, Captain? What would make this easier for you?"

She tried to keep the mocking tone out of her voice but failed miserably.

"See, that's what I mean! I'm trying to be nice here and all you do is give me hell for it."

She scoffed. "Are you being nice? Or are you trying to placate your own guilt?"

He exhaled and tilted his head to glare at the ceiling. "God damn it, you're impossible. I didn't mean it."

Leia's chill melted with devastating force, the dam breaking in one swift rush. Blood sang in her veins and she wondered why she even bothered to be sensible with this man. _I didn't mean it_ was emblazoned on her mind like a brand. Fury swelled, hot and angry and completely out of her control.

"I'm impossible? You come in here to apologize for an awful thing you said and you have yet to acknowledge that you were wrong," she said, voice rising. "You've offered no apology, no regret. There is nothing in what you've said to tell me that you understand why you should apologize."

"Obviously it was wrong!" he said. The volume of his voice ticked up a notch. "I didn't think I needed to spell it out for you."

Immediate fire. Flames as high as the _Falcon,_ all-consuming, and Leia knew she was about to be burned alive. The dim desire in her heart inflamed as if torched: swift, boundless power outside of her careful mask. She didn't understand what she was feeling or how she was capable of such utter hatred for a person. Weren't her emotions destroyed with Alderaan? Wasn't she ice?

But no. There was no moving on from this. Passionate fury, unfurled heat, unbridled life sprung around her in pinpoints of electricity and for the hundredth time Leia wondered how the hell an empty shell of a woman could feel hurt and anger so very deeply.

"Apologizing is not _spelling it out for me,_ " she fired back. "Why was it wrong, Han? Do you even know?"

"Because I don't want to fuck you, Leia! It was a stupid challenge and a stupid comment. Are you happy?"

Instant pain spiderwebbed through her chest. Cracks in the ice, shards in her heart. She blinked, startled by the depth of her reaction, before carefully resuming her normal repression techniques.

His voice was so loud that it echoed around the cabin, from the light banks above their heads to the hulls and the deck beneath their feet. Leia's breath caught, a terrible hitch in her chest, as her eyes took in Han's stricken expression. He seemed nearly as dumbfounded at his outburst as she felt. The flames felt so real, encircling them, choking the air with smoke. Her eyes burned.

Again: silence. And his eyes, wide and frozen as she watched them. And his hand, still splayed on the cot next to his thigh. And his chest, rising and falling with quick breaths.

It was easier to look at him than it was to understand this mix of horror and hurt that ran through her body without her consent, sneaking past her emotional guardrails and ambushing her pending vulnerability. Something vile was erupting under her skin from the center of her rib cage. Clawing through her organs, swimming through her bloodstream. Hurt? Betrayal? Some devious mix of the two, insidious and poisonous?

 _What did you expect?_ The voice in her ears was lower, darker than the one that came from her mouth. _This is what happens when you let yourself feel._

Repress. Move on. Hide.

"Well, that's a relief," she said. "We're on the same page."

Han closed his eyes and the last shred of horror on his face dropped like an anvil. When she next saw the green they were cold, confident, proud. "Great," he spat.

"Good," she agreed.

He nodded once, stood and walked out the hatch without another word, leaving Leia unfathomably hurt and without a shred of understanding why.

She pressed her lips together and looked blankly at the hull in front of her. She simmered, smoldered, the fire changing shape. More subtle now, quieter. Contained, maybe. She didn't understand and didn't have the fortitude to try.

Her palm came up to a spot on her chest, between her lungs, where a small knot of rejection tightened into a hard ball. The tunic felt cool against her fingertips, but beneath it her heart was pounding. Loud and insistent.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Luke peek around the hatch and then walk to her side, sitting so close to her that her bare thigh touched the fabric of his pants. Leia focused on absorbing the energy Luke brought, the lightness of being he projected. Anger didn't deserve a place at the table with Luke Skywalker.

If Han and she had fire between them, Luke brought water. Peace. Tranquility. Love.

"I heard yelling," he explained.

She nodded and turned her head to squint at him. "Apparently it's my fault that he's an idiot."

Luke blew out his breath. "Makes you wonder why you care, huh?"

Leia watched Luke's eyes: the kindness, the gentleness, the good. He was exactly the man he presented himself to be. Compassionate, brave, loving. No hidden motives, no aggressive masks. An uncomplicated heart with no scars, no blemishes. The exact opposite of his friend, the unpredictable smuggler of a thousand faces.

She knew she was somewhere in the middle, that she had her own masks, her own blemishes. Like the mug Han had given her, she was fundamentally broken. If they were a spectrum, Luke would be on one side and Han on the other, and Leia would be somewhere in the middle, wobbling violently side to side and caught in a fight between the light and the dark.

A swell of gratitude overtook her and she leaned into Luke's shoulder, resting her weight onto his as he wrapped an arm around her. Luke extinguished the fire, calm and sure, and Leia was left with one awful truth.

"You were right," she whispered. "I have feelings for him."

Luke sighed and nodded against her temple. And Leia began to settle into a fundamental truth that she hadn't let herself confront before this very moment: what she felt for Han Solo was not simple attraction. It never had been. Fire didn't burn without a flame; she could no longer pretend that it did. She hadn't smothered the embers fast enough and now here she was, unable to move on.

 _What a colossal mistake you've made,_ she thought helplessly. _What a complete and utter mistake._


	3. Chapter 3

**Part Three:**

Luke kicked at the frozen ground beneath his feet, bored and anxious as he awaited Leia's return. The earth didn't budge, swollen with the rainfall of a monsoon two nights ago and now held together with ice. His fingers were stiff inside his gloves and the unprotected skin on the back of his neck ached with cold.

He didn't do well with cold.

Eretraa was known for its tempestuous weather. The small planet zipped around its star with a nearly perfect circular orbit, its eccentricity so close to zero that the warm season should have lasted indefinitely, as Tatooine's did with its two suns. But Eretraa's rotation cycle was a complete mess, incalculable and unstable, a byproduct of a local gravitic abnormality called _The Big Surge_ that warped … everything.

He'd never felt weather shift so quickly from one season to another as he had on this planet; devastating autumnal monsoons became the dead of winter in just twenty-nine hours flat. That was meteorology as quick as the _Falcon,_ and the _Falcon_ was faster than any ship Luke had ever seen.

Chewie had tried to explain it to Luke while en route, but Luke's comprehension of Shyriiwook was colloquial at best. And while planetary science was interesting to Luke, it was mostly a means to an end: information to use and discard as necessary. Science for science's sake was not what he was here for.

"How late is she?" Luke asked Han, and resumed his fruitless ground-kicking. A loud avian squawked in the forest canopy above them and Luke started mid-kick, his knee jerking to the side with an audible pop.

With a low groan, Luke checked to see if Han had seen the embarrassing display. The older man stared up to the sky, squinting into the heavy cloud cover, looking for all the world as if he wanted to use the avians for target practice. Han wore the same white shirt, black pants, black vest combo he'd worn the day Luke had met him nearly two years ago, with the small additions of a knee-length winter coat and a pair of worn gloves. Luke idly wondered if Han owned multiple items of each type or if the _Falcon_ 's valet was as overworked as her souped-up hyperdrive core.

A chill wind ripped through the copse where they stood, tugging at Han's hair and the edges of his coat.

"Thirty-eight minutes," Han answered.

Luke noted Han's tense, worried tone and the fact that the smuggler wasn't holding a chrono. _Is he counting the time?_ Luke wondered, impressed despite himself. Sometimes Han reminded Luke a lot of the swashbuckling heroes of his youth. Until he opened his mouth, that was.

"Is that all? It's felt like hours," Luke said.

"It's long enough," Han muttered. "Something's wrong."

Luke pressed his lips together, his anxiety ratcheting up a notch. Leia had told Luke she wasn't going to waste time with pleasantries with the Alliance Intelligence cell. She had a group of people to relocate into a new safe house and time was of the essence. As the only member of the mission team who knew the new destination of the cell, Leia alone had been responsible for moving them to a more secure location somewhere out here, a klick away from Porte's city limits.

Luke's part of the mission—establishing contact with the cell and finding Leia a safe route into their old headquarters—had gone right as rain. Leia had said so: _right as rain_ wasn't a phrase he'd understood until she'd explained it. The cell HQ was easy enough to locate with Leia's considerable help and he'd met no Imperial resistance as he scouted the most direct course from the _Falcon's_ berth to the cell. Leia had said his part of the mission would be simple and for once everything had gone to plan.

Leia had departed from the spaceport last night before sundown and then stayed with the cell overnight under the permanent citywide female curfew. She'd checked in with the _Falcon_ on arrival to the cell, right on time, and Luke had breathed a sigh of relief. Surely she was safe with the intelligence operatives? And they could protect her during the move from their old HQ to their new one?

Luke shook his head. If Leia were to hear him assume her safety was in the hands of anyone but the princess herself, she would kick him in the shins.

After a tense night, Han and Luke had started the planned hike out into the wilderness outside Porte in mid-morning, leaving Chewie to watch over the _Falcon._ On paper, the mission had been a success, but Luke was nonetheless left with a nagging sense of disquiet. He'd been relieved to hear her voice in her final check-in this afternoon, confirming all was clear and the cell was about ready to leave for their new HQ.

 _Give me two hours,_ she'd said, signing off without another word. That'd been two hours and thirty-eight—no, t _hirty-nine_ —minutes ago, and Luke's bad feeling had only grown in strength. By the look on Han's face, the smuggler wasn't feeling much better about it, either.

"Should we look for her?" Luke asked. "Maybe she's lost?"

Han broke his skyward glare to arch a brow at Luke. "You think she's lost? Leia?"

Luke's heart sank. It'd been a pipe-dream, thinking that the ever-capable, ever-deadly Leia Organa had wandered slightly off-course on her way back to her two escorts. Luke, sure: Luke was totally capable of getting lost in a forest. But not Han and definitely not Leia. If she was a half-hour late, there was a reason and it wasn't going to be a pleasant one.

"No, I don't," Luke replied, kicking at the mud-ice again. "Maybe she's trying to pay you back."

Han threw Luke a quick, dirty glare.

"What? It's possible."

"No, it isn't. Leia isn't gonna put her mission in danger to teach me a lesson," Han said.

Luke shrugged. "If you say so. She's pretty pissed."

"She's always pissed."

Luke looked up sharply, ready to eviscerate Han for such an unfair statement, but stopped at the palpable horror emanating from the older man. This wasn't the first time Luke had felt it on this mission. Han fairly screamed self-loathing. It was painted in the way he fell into terse silence, the way he shifted weight from one foot to the other, always ready to flee his own discomfort.

"No, she's not, and you know it," Luke said, leaning back against a nearby tree with black bark and yellowing leaves. "And even if she _was_ always pissed, you would deserve it this time. You couldn't even apologize to her."

He'd heard the scene in the cabin. They hadn't been quiet and Luke was man enough to admit that he'd been interested in how the conversation would go. He'd kept track of Han as he moped around the _Falcon_ and when the smuggler wandered toward the crew cabin, Luke had stayed close by.

What could he say? He was fascinated. And nervous. The confrontation was bound to backfire spectacularly. Luke was no expert in relationships but the waves of misunderstanding coming from both Han and Leia were enough to guarantee that neither was ready to listen to the other.

Luke knew Han was in love with Leia; it was as obvious as the crooked nose on his face. He was a brave guy, of course: heroic despite himself and courageous to a fault. But nothing triggered Han's panic-mode recklessness like Leia in danger. Subtlety was not the smuggler's strong suit and when things got tough, it was the princess that received the brunt of Han's wild-eyed concern and scalding anger. No one else. Ever.

As far as spectator sports were concerned, this was the least strategic game Luke had ever seen.

Part of the reason Luke had started to reevaluate his feelings for Leia was because he'd watched Han, and what Han was feeling was very different from what Luke felt. Maybe it was the Force, maybe it was natural empathy. Maybe Han was just terrible at hiding his reactions. Whatever it was, Luke was fairly certain that his own attachment to Leia was more about deep friendship than romantic love. And, honestly, it didn't bother him. He wanted his friends safe and as happy as they could be, down in the muck with the rest of the Alliance.

It hadn't occurred to Luke that Leia had also slipped under the spell of emotional attachment. She was so much harder to read than Han was, trapped in a mental wall that had stronger fortifications than the vast majority of Alliance bases did. Luke could feel happiness from her, could feel delight and excitement on those rare occasions when she exploded with thrilled energy: the destruction of the Death Star, for one. In those moments, he felt he truly understood Leia, how passionate she was, how energetic.

But her negative emotions were a different story entirely. To Luke it felt as if all trauma, all heartache, all negativity was locked in an internal black hole of sorts, its destructive capabilities feeding off the extraordinary agony he knew she felt. The black hole must be massive, gorging itself on Leia's enormous losses. Force only knew there was enough there to keep it fed for millennia.

Her feelings for Han must have fallen into that black hole. He hadn't sensed them at all.

Luke's heart squeezed at the thought; Leia didn't consider her feelings for Han to be a happy occurrence, if she considered them at all. He could sense no joy in her. He could feel _nothing_ from her. He'd assumed that Leia was truly indifferent to Han, that she valued his friendship but that Han's outright consumptive feelings for Leia were unrequited. It had never occurred to him that Leia's feelings for Han would lead to more pain, that she would bury them so deep that he would never suspect their existence.

Well, until that moment in the _Falcon_ 's galley. The one in which Han had sabotaged his fragile connection to Leia in the space of one sentence.

Luke had suddenly felt like he'd been granted access to the vortex of Leia's emotional black hole. And what a maelstrom it was: fire and ice and a wind so forceful that he had sucked in a breath. Gritty, like the sandstorms of home, but without their dead simplicity. Leia had felt more like the hurricanes of Threshal II: gigantic winds and unexpected lightning and the crushing onslaught of torrential downpour.

For a moment—one clear, awful moment—Luke had felt what Leia felt. And it wasn't something he could comprehend. Too many elements to this storm, not just wind and sand but any number of terrible surprises that battered him for the space of one tiny second.

He hadn't known what to do, so he'd greeted her with as much warmth he could, instinctively trying to defuse the situation. He'd sounded ridiculous, of course, high-pitched and far too excited, but his sole focus had been on the devastation Han's comment had wrought upon his closest friend.

And then Leia had left the _Falcon_ and Luke was spat back into the harsh reality of sexual politics and tensile awkwardness between his two favorite humans.

"She jumped down my throat before I could apologize," Han said. Defensiveness was etched into every word, scored into the bedrock of Han Solo's personality. "I couldn't get a word in edgewise. "

"Uh-huh. Was that before or after you yelled at her?"

Han threw his hands up. "Ah, you're as bad as Chewie. Give me a break, kid, I'm trying."

Luke didn't want to criticize. He didn't honestly know much about women. But he thought he knew Leia pretty well now and nothing the smuggler was saying sounded like the right kind of _trying_ to him. Not if he was up against that black hole. "Are you really trying?"

Han glared at him.

"I mean, I think you _think_ you're trying. But you hurt her, Han. And she's not going to just stop being Leia to let you half-apologize for hurting her. She's way more complicated than that."

"Don't I know it," Han said, looking down at the ground, his jaw tight.

Luke crossed one foot over the other, his weight totally supported by the tree behind him. With a moment of sharp clarity he saw himself as an outsider would, trying to help Han navigate choppy waters of his own making. He didn't smile, but the stray thought was amusing enough to tuck it away for private entertainment later.

"Look, do what you want," Luke said instead. "I'm just saying that what you've done so far hasn't made her feel any better. Maybe you should try something else."

 _Like be honest about what you want_ , Luke thought. It would be a good place to start, at the very least. Han didn't want to fuck Leia _,_ as he'd professed with such crudeness. He wanted to love her _._ And Luke wasn't sure that Han truly understood what the scope of the difference was between casual sex and love. It wasn't Leia's job to figure that out for him. Han needed to sort Han out and Leia needed to sort Leia out. Nobody could do it for them.

Han looked away, ran a hand over his mouth, and turned back to Luke. Luke tilted his head and felt a sting of cold as sleet began to fall around them, wet and chill and miserable. Han didn't seem to take notice, focused on Luke with misery stamped across his face.

"I don't think there's a damn thing that I could do at this point, Luke. She's decided that she doesn't want to talk about it."

Luke furrowed his brow. "So don't talk about it."

The smuggler rolled his eyes. "Yeah, okay. Have you met Leia? Talking is her weapon of choice."

Luke couldn't help his small smile now. "You are awful at talking. Awful. What in blazes did you think would happen if you tried to explain why you said something that is …. Unexplainable?"

"Is that a word?" Han asked. "It doesn't sound like a real word."

Luke shrugged again. "You can ask Leia later if you want. But I think you should focus on showing her that you care, that you're her friend. And you do that much better without words."

"I don't have friends," Han said. He crossed his arms over his chest and resumed his indiscriminate glower at the sky.

Luke sighed, taking the hint. Han felt too vulnerable to discuss this seriously any more. His old catchphrases always tipped Luke off: _I'm in it for the money, I'm not a part of your rebellion, I don't have friends._ When Han's kneejerk selfish responses came out, he was done. No amount of cajoling would sway him now.

"Okay, that's it," Luke said. He swiped his hands on his pants and turned at the waist to check the charge on his holstered blaster. "I'm going to go find Leia. How long has it been?"

Han didn't look at his chrono. "Two hours and forty-nine minutes."

Luke shook his head, bewildered. "How in blazes do you _do_ —"

His words died in his throat as he heard a loud crash to his right. Luke whirled, blaster out, straining to hear footsteps or blaster bolts or screams. He saw Han do the same in his peripheral vision, the smuggler's face intense and concentrated, his stance wide.

Nothing followed the crash; an eerie hush settled on the forest around them. Luke couldn't hear the avians any longer, their silence ominous.

"What was that?" Luke murmured to Han.

Han's eyes were focused in the direction of the sound and his voice was low. "Dunno, but I'd take odds it's not good."

The scene slowed to a sluggish fog, every detail shifting into importance as Luke tried to take in each sensory detail. His skin tingled; his finger itched against the trigger of his blaster. The cold bit into the skin of his face. It felt like time had stopped.

Luke held his breath as the seconds ticked by.

Another crash, loud and close. Luke took a step back in preparation to retreat. But Han cursed low in his throat, dropped his head and charged toward the crash. Luke could hear the crunch of frozen dirt beneath the smuggler's boots as they hit at full impact.

Luke immediately followed. Legs pumping, he eyed the lines of Han's back as they sprinted into the scraggly forest between their established rendezvous and Porte's city limits where Leia was supposed to have moved the Alliance cell. Luke kept his head up, trying to discern what exactly they were charging into, but the wind had picked up and the trees were large enough to obscure his view.

He heard a third crash and then the very clear, very distinct sound of a blaster whine. Luke's breath caught and he strained to see into the copse, browns and greens and the white of sleet blurring past him as he ran.

"Keep going that way!" Han shouted, pointing straight ahead of them. "That's Leia!"

Before Luke could question how Han knew Leia was ahead of them, the smuggler veered sharply right and sprinted into the forest at top speed. Too shocked to follow, Luke tucked his chin and ran faster, feeling the ice-dirt crunch beneath his feet His lungs burned, the cool air a sharp contrast to the heat of the blood in his veins.

A blaster bolt sliced through the air near his left ear. With a low grunt, Luke ducked and sidestepped, then resumed his all-out sprint. The air in front of him looked hazy, smoke drifting between tree trunks thick enough to make him choke. Luke didn't think twice, ploughing straight into the thick of the smoke as another blaster bolt pierced the air far to his left.

"Luke!" he heard, a joyful sound nearly overwhelmed by another crash and his heavy breaths. "Luke! Go!"

He skidded to an immediate halt and peered into the smoke. "Leia?" he shouted. "Where are you?"

He knew it was stupid to stop moving. He'd seen far too many ground fights in his time with the Alliance to not question why he stood like a nerf as an enemy approached him. But he couldn't see her. He didn't want to start shooting until he knew where Leia was. His visibility was dreadful: smoke, sleet and the falling detritus of the trees around him in the way. He could injure her _,_ or Han—wherever he was—or himself. The last thing they needed was friendly fire.

Two more blaster bolts whizzed by him and his heart beat in overtime. Where was she? Where was—?

Oh, hell.

In the space of one blink, Luke could see both Leia and her pursuers, dark outlines in the smoke they themselves were creating. Leia's small form was running full-tilt toward him, head turned to look behind her, blaster out and firing as she bobbed and weaved away from the Imperials' return fire. Leia ducked and Luke's heart froze as she tumbled to the ground. He took one step toward her before he realized Leia had rolled out of the way of a thrown detonator. Now safely out of range, she hardly flinched when the detonator blew, causing another loud crash and debris to fling in all directions.

The Imperials behind her were in an open-air speeder, relatively slow and struggling in the cold air. Luke counted seven stormtroopers, four in the speeder and the remaining on foot beside it. They were providing plenty of offensive fire, but the bolts seemed haphazard at best. Luke realized that Leia's strategy of a mad dash toward cover was probably the only one that could get them to safety.

Leia continued running, nearly passing him a few meters to his left. Luke turned and copied her movements, head turned to the side, eyes carefully tracking the Imperials behind him, his feet hitting the dirt as fast as he could manage. With a deep breath of the harsh, icy air, Luke set his blaster ablaze, lighting up the speeder behind him and trying to add to Leia's chaos campaign.

"Where's Han?" Leia shouted over the din.

Luke turned his head to the other side, seeing Leia set her run at a diagonal toward his trajectory. "Dunno!" he yelled back. "I think he's trying to hit them from—"

A loud screech sounded from the speeder behind him and both Luke and Leia turned to look. Through the smoke, Luke could see a figure standing on the back hull of the speeder. Han took four quick shots to the Imperials aboard, the sharp _crack-crack-crack-crack_ of the DL-44 reaching Luke's ears only a second later. With a low whistle, Luke took cover behind a tree and aimed a shot at the nearest stormtrooper. The trooper didn't even see Luke, turned as he was to look at the demise of the rest of his party in the speeder. Luke missed his initial shot but downed the Imperial on the second try. A quick glance to the side showed Leia cleaning up the other side of the speeder, the high pitch of her blaster sounding twice before going quiet.

Luke leaned his head against the trunk of the tree, catching his breath with a disbelieving laugh. He stood after a moment, stepped away from his tree and moved to check on Leia.

Her hair was a mess, chunks falling out of her braid and down her back. Her loose blue tunic shifted in the wind, the fold of the fabric flapping just above the bare skin of her knees. Luke winced as he looked at her feet, outfitted in ridiculous sandals with no coverage. Leia didn't react to any of this, her beautiful face determined and her blaster pistol gripped tight in her fist.

"Are you okay?" Luke asked her.

She nodded, opened her mouth to answer but was interrupted.

"What the hell did you do, Your Worship?" Han yelled from about twenty meters away. "Send 'em an invite?"

Luke turned his head. Han stood on the roof of the speeder, boots crusted with drying mud and hands spread wide, obnoxious and victorious. The speeder was contributing to the smoke, black and ugly, from its rear thruster. Luke nodded at the short-sightedness of Han's plan: if he had had any sense, he wouldn't have disabled the one resource they had to get them back to the _Falcon_ quickly.

But no. As Luke had learned the first day they'd met, Han's best skill was immediate survival, not long-term planning.

Leia blew a strand of errant hair out of her eyes. "Yes, Han. I wanted company for my little walk through the woods."

Luke threw a quick grin her way, then turned to look at Han. "Nice timing. I thought my legs were about to give out."

"Time to do some cardio, kid," Han said, jumping down from the speeder and jogging to Luke and Leia. "Did the cell make it to the new safe house?"

A heavy silence fell as Leia breathed beside Luke, arms hanging at her sides like they were weighed down with durasteel. A strong breeze tugged on the ends of her tunic and Luke saw her shiver. On instinct he stepped toward her, to block her from the wind or to offer the comfort she so obviously needed. He wasn't sure which.

"No," she finally said. "They're dead."

Luke gaped at her, dumbfounded. "What? When? They were fine three hours ago!"

She pursed her lips and looked to the ground. "We didn't make it ten meters from the old HQ door," she said, eyes still downcast. "Stormtroopers were posted on the rooftops, ready and armed. We didn't stand a chance."

Luke's heart stuttered. "How did you escape?" he asked.

"Rolled into an open doorway while they butchered the entire cell and then ran for it. The operatives couldn't even get their blasters out. We were outgunned from the very beginning. They were waiting for us."

"How did they know where you were?" Han asked, nearer now, his coat whipping behind him as he walked toward them.

Leia shrugged and lifted her chin to look at Han. "I can only assume my transmissions to you were intercepted."

Luke caught Han's eye as the smuggler reached their position. Han shrugged off his coat, careful not to let it touch the ground, and unceremoniously draped it over Leia's shoulders. She opened her mouth to protest and Han shook his head at her, wordlessly dismissing her concerns. The bottom hem of the coat fell to her ankles, just brushing the tops of her pathetic sandals.

Luke watched the silent exchange, charmed despite himself. He'd seen Han flirt, he'd seen Han seduce, he'd seen the ease with which the smuggler navigated his relations with other people. And he'd never seen anything quite as instinctive as Han giving Leia his coat to keep her warm. Not a play, not a gesture. The hidden depths of the Corellian always fascinated Luke, the walls he'd constructed to keep everyone out. The ones that had a Leia-sized hole in them from day one.

"It wasn't your fault," Luke said, to fill the quiet and force Leia to accept Han's gift. She stared at him with coolness, chill as the air around them, but then nodded once and wrapped the coat more tightly against herself.

"Someday you will have to explain to me why it's not my fault those people are dead."

"But not now," Han said, hoisting a pack of supplies onto his shoulder. Luke hadn't noticed it before: standard Imperial issued and quite obviously from the speeder's emergency supply bin. "We have an hour until nightfall and we're not gonna make it to the _Falcon_ before then."

"What's in the pack?" Luke asked.

Han shrugged. "Some rations, a themo-blanket, water. Not much."

Luke grimaced. At the very least they needed shelter. The sleet had stopped, but the sky was still overcast and he didn't trust this planet's meteorology farther than he could throw it. "Do we make a run for it, get to the city after dark?"

"Well," Han said, turning to look at the woods behind them. "The closer we get to Porte, the closer we are to Chewie. But, uh—"

"I'm under curfew," Leia finished for him.

Han nodded. "Someone in town sees you and we're fucked, plain and simple."

Luke pressed his tongue to the side of his cheek, thinking carefully about their supplies and the very real possibility that the temperature could drop at nightfall. He berated himself for not trying harder to listen to Chewie's planetary science lecture. He honestly had no idea how they should prepare for the cold, the sleet, the wind, the Empire or some apex predator that he never knew existed. Too many variables, too many possible failures.

"So we make camp here," Leia said, on the same track as Luke. "We find a suitable place for the night and start moving back to the _Falcon_ at first light."

Luke shook his head. "No, we head closer to Porte and make camp before sunset. Preferably somewhere we can cover if Imperials come looking for us."

And they _would_ come looking for them. Standard operating procedure dictated a search party if stormtroopers went incommunicado for more than an hour. Han, Leia and Luke had to get as far away from this place as they safely could.

"Agreed," Han said, tipping an irreverent salute to Luke. "I could send a signal to Chewie, too, get him to meet us early in the morning."

"No," Leia said, grabbing Han's arm with alarm. "No signals. The Imperials have obviously cracked our frequency security systems. You'll bring more of them down on us."

Han grunted his agreement and Leia's hand slipped off his arm as if she suddenly realized she was touching him. She stepped back, skittish and trying not to appear so, and gave a decisive nod. "Then it's settled. Let's go."

She turned, the edges of Han's coat whipping around her, and began to march eastward. Luke watched the line of her back, watched her tuck her head into the hood of the coat, and then snuck a glance at Han.

"Nice job," Luke said. "With the speeder, I mean."

Han hunched his shoulders, swinging the pack behind him, looking embarrassed. "No big deal," he muttered, stepping past Luke to follow Leia. "It's what I do."

But Luke was faster than him. Before Han could pass him completely, Luke's boot rose and kicked Han in the shin. Han jerked his chin to glare at Luke. "Can I help you?" the older man snarled, teeth bared and eyes sharp.

Luke was unimpressed. "What I said earlier? About not talking?"

Han's face didn't change, but Luke felt a softening from him. Like he'd let the leash out a bit. "Yeah?" the smuggler said.

"The coat," Luke said, eyebrows up and gloved hand indicating Leia as she disappeared into the trees ahead of them. "The coat was a nice touch."

Han gave Luke a confused look and a shake of his head before hitching the pack higher on his shoulder and starting after Leia. Luke pressed his lips together and trudged behind his companions, amused at Han's utter lack of comprehension. At least the man was consistent, Luke thought: screwing up his chances by lying to the woman he loved and then starting the apology process by unconscious self-sacrifice.

 _Back-assward,_ Uncle Owen would have said. _The man has it all back-assward._

 _Sure does, Uncle Owen,_ Luke thought. _He sure does._

XXX

The wind howled and the sleet returned intermittently as they walked. Luke could feel the cold against his nose and the hour dragged on, step after step of icy mud beneath his feet. The forest seemed interminable, a line of trees into infinity. He considered how Han had once mentioned that Tatooine deserts felt the same to him: unending and indistinguishable from each other. To Luke's practiced eye his homeworld was a veritable sea of recognizable landmarks, any number of which could easily guide him home. Was it only unfamiliar terrain that felt that way to humans? Would Luke find a new home after this war and live to see the topography become familiar?

Forty minutes into their dusk trek—by Luke's chrono, not Han's odd internal timekeeping mechanism—they came to a heavy stream, rolling and twisting through the forest. He'd heard the rush of water ten minutes ago to his left but nothing in the natural vegetation had seemed to change. Then again, he was awful at plants—he'd failed his first two survival courses before the third had miraculously switched to a desert scenario—so maybe Han and Leia had already predicted that the stream would cross their path. Neither of them seemed particularly surprised as they halted at the water's edge.

Though not necessarily the wildest natural water feature Luke had navigated in his time with the Alliance, it was wide enough that a simple running leap wouldn't cross it. He estimated the stream was twenty meters across at its most narrow. Rocks studded the water's surface but they were irregularly placed and too small to support the weight of a grown human. Luke glanced up and eyed the darkening sky through the break in the canopy. A moon was already rising to the west, deep red and imposing as he considered how little time they had before they needed to find shelter.

"What do you think?" he asked Han and Leia. "It's pretty wide."

Behind him, Han's voice was decisive and brooked no argument. "We're gonna have to ford it."

Luke nodded, already coming to the same conclusion. With a small sigh he glanced down at his boots to see how deeply he could wade before the fabric of his pants would get wet. Satisfied, he silently thanked Jan Dodonna for insisting all Alliance personnel wear watertight, knee-high boots while in the field.

Then his heart sank.

"Your feet," he said to Leia. "You can't cross the water dressed like…. that."

Out of his peripheral vision, he saw Leia glare at her sandals, her bottom lip jutting out with an angry hiss. He could almost hear her rage at the culture that insisted she wear unsuitable clothing for wilderness survival and frantic escapes from Imperial stormtroopers. He'd heard it aloud often enough. It was a surprisingly common occurrence in his missions with Leia and it never failed to make him feel guilty and deeply angry.

 _Focus,_ he told himself. They had a problem and it needed a solution. If Leia's feet got wet and the temperature dropped as quickly as Luke suspected it would, she was in serious danger of exposure. Anything they might use to bundle her feet would be wet through the night.

Luke had never seen frostbite before, though Wedge had described it to him in excruciating detail It didn't take a genius to understand that unprotected extremities, water and cold were not a good combination.

Maybe they could tie the pack around her feet? Could they somehow share his boots? Could they lift her from rock to rock as they waded, Han on one side and Luke on the other?

Luke shook his head. Not a single one of those thoughts was helpful. He exhaled, tried to double-down on offering a viable answer and was caught by surprise when Han's stolen pack hit him in the stomach.

"Take that," the smuggler said without looking at Luke.

Confused, Luke glanced at Leia, intending to share one of their _Han isn't making sense_ looks. Certainly they had a considerable store of them. But she wasn't looking at Luke; she was turned toward Han with a resigned look on her face, her forehead creased and her mouth tight. He saw her shiver as a cold gust of wind tore through the open air of the bank, rustling leaves and tugging loose small hairs from beneath the top of her hood.

"Your back, please," she said. "We are not doing a repeat of the last time."

Han nodded, mouth set tight. Without another word he knelt, one knee pressed into the ground, hair ruffling in the wind. With a start, Luke realized the simple solution that had eluded him as Leia walked behind Han and wrapped her arms around his neck. Luke was shocked at the fluidity of it, the practiced air of Han sweeping Leia up onto his back as if she weighed nothing and as if this was a regular occurrence.

For all Luke knew, maybe it was.

With a slight heft and a moment of fumbling to find her legs under his coat, Han secured Leia and stood.

"Last time?" Luke asked as Han stepped past him and into the water.

Leia turned her head, pursed her lips and said, "Trust me, Luke. You don't want to know."

That small comment intrigued Luke as they safely crossed the stream, as Han set Leia back down on her feet and as they continued the rest of their hike in silence. The carelessness, the ease with which Leia had agreed to Han's assistance was unexpected. Trust wasn't something either of them seemed to have in droves. Han was more blatant about it, loudly proclaiming to anyone in earshot that he didn't put much stock in friendship despite the obvious contradiction of his seven-foot Wookiee copilot.

But Leia was just as reticent as Han to openly trust others, as evidenced by the people she recruited for her missions. Han, Luke, Chewie. Some of the Rogues, if needed. And that was it. There was no doubt in Luke's mind that Leia would never feel as comfortable being lifted by anyone else. Luke had always kept a polite distance, instinctively understanding that Leia felt safer with Han. And it had never seemed symptomatic of a larger issue—Han was bigger, stronger and less inclined to respect for personal space. Of course he'd be the one to haul Leia up on his back if the situation required it.

But Luke had more information now. And wasn't it interesting that Han had unflinchingly assisted Leia twice since they'd found her, without a single consideration or hint of ulterior motive? Gave her his coat, carried her across the stream?

If Han was deliberately following Luke's advice, he wasn't giving any clues about it. This was not apologetic behavior. This was…. Well. This was how Han and Leia worked together. Seamlessly. Unconsciously. With an underlying line of trust between them.

Which meant there was trust on both sides. Hope for a friendly resolution filled his chest, warmth blooming in the midst of the cold that whipped around him like a cyclone.

Night fell quickly on Eretraa. Luke wasn't surprised—this planet did nothing but throw them the unexpected—and when it was too dark to see where he was going, he stopped the group.

"What do you think?" he asked, taking in the area around them. "Any shelter?"

They were in the densest part of the forest, coniferous trees all around them. To Luke's right was a massive trunk, the limbs so high above him that even Chewbacca wouldn't have been able to reach the lowest of them from the ground. The darkened sky was no longer distinguishable from the pine needles and branches of the tree canopy. If there was precipitation falling, Luke couldn't feel it. It seemed the ideal place to set up a shelter.

"We're on even ground," Han said, ranging ahead of Luke. "What we need is somewhere we can keep warm. I don't like how cold it's getting already."

Luke nodded and slowly took in the space around them. The wind was his primary concern; if they were going to lie low for the night, they'd need a windbreak. If the wind had any sort of pattern to the direction it blew, Luke couldn't figure it out. It felt like it attacked him from all sides, first to the numb skin of his face and then to the back of his legs. Their best bet was underground but they didn't have a way to dig a trench—

"Here," Leia said to Luke's left. "This is promising. A topographic depression."

"A... What?" Luke asked.

Leia shifted. Luke could hear her movements as she kicked aside pinecones and leaves. "A ditch," she explained. "A very small ditch under a tree with exposed roots. There's room for all of us, I think."

"Under a tree?" Luke couldn't picture it.

"In a ditch?" Han asked. "That _is_ depressing."

Leia's voice was immediate, strong, infallible. "Yes. With leaves and the thermo-blanket, I imagine it's the warmest we're going to get."

"And out of immediate sight, if your Imperial friends decide to come looking for us," Han said. His voice was closer now, just to Luke's left. "The only place safer would be up in the tree—"

"—but we'd get caught in the wind," Leia finished for him. "Help me dig out some of this brush, boys. This is our home for the night."

XXX

Darkness fell, cold and biting. The wind howled. And Han was finding grim humor in the situation.

"You realize that if we die in here, no one will find us?"

Han's voice was quiet, hushed and came from what amounted to the far side of the tiny space in which they lay. Luke couldn't see him. Surrounded by the pitch black of an Eretraan midnight, their eyes were next to useless. The nest of roots provided them shelter from above, though Luke's minor claustrophobia made him slightly anxious. His could feel his own exhales against his lips: the root above them was only a meter away from his nose.

Leia lay between them, still wrapped in Han's coat. Luke could hear the whisper of the fabric against his glove whenever either of them moved. The thermo-blanket lay over them all, though it was skewed to Han's side because Luke was still wearing his winter gear and Han was vulnerable to the cold without his coat.

Luke turned onto his side to face them both, crooking his knees closer to Leia's feet and trying to keep them as warm as he could. He could feel the cold wind bite into the nape of his neck and worried—always worried—about Leia. Programmed into his cells, infused into his soul. Making sure she was safe felt like something he couldn't fail to do.

"We're not going to die here," Luke said, reaching across Leia's body to smack Han in the shoulder.

Han snorted. "If we did, though, we'd become a mystery. Two brave heroes who went to meet the princess in the woods. _And none of them were ever seen again,_ " Han said. "Not my favorite way to die, but not the worst, either."

"Hmph," Leia muttered. The sound was muffled against the collar of Han's coat. She moved her chin side to side until her mouth was free of the collar. "Chewie will be able to track us in the morning. Even if we die tonight, we'll be found."

"Good point," Han admitted. "Furball can smell cadavers real well. I've seen him do it."

Luke grimaced. Sometimes he admired Han and Leia's shared macabre humor in hopeless situations. He didn't now. "A little optimism, guys? We've survived worse than this."

They'd rescued Leia from the literal clutches of Darth Vader. Surely a cold night on this stupid planet wouldn't kill them.

"Kid, we're huddled together beneath a tree, wrapped up in one thermo-blanket and a bunch of leaves. My ass is numb because we're lying in a fucking ditch, and did I mention we're _under a tree?_ "

"You have," Luke said. "Several times."

"That doesn't do much to inspire confidence in our survival," Han concluded. "And if it comes down to it, I'm totally willing to eat one of you if the occasion calls for it."

Luke felt Leia turn her head toward Han. "That's disgusting _,_ " she admonished, but Luke heard a smile in her voice.

"I'm just saying," Han replied. "You gotta do what you gotta do."

Luke was ready to smack Han's shoulder again. "No one is eating anyone. And if I wake up without a foot, I'm going to be very angry, Han."

Luke was delighted to hear a soft laugh beside him and checked to make sure his knees were still protecting her feet before drifting off into a light, fitful sleep. The dark was ominous, the wind terrifying, but knowing Han and Leia were with him made it a little easier to swallow.

XXX

Luke awoke just before dawn, the cold burrowing into the muscles of his back like seeped duracrete. The air around him was dusty, muted, grey with early light. He shut his eyes,pressed his face into the hood of his coat and hunched his shoulders, trying to get comfortable again without success.

Fruitless moments passed and Luke opened his eyes again. In the dim light, he could blurrily make out his two friends asleep beside him, breathing deeply and warm beneath the thermo-blanket.

Their vague outlines dimmed into one watery haze. Luke groaned and rubbed his eyes with a hand, trying to clear some of the blurriness. He flexed his legs, stretched to bring feeling back to his feet, then arched his back and sighed.

And then stopped. His legs hadn't bumped Leia's knees.

Suddenly awake, he lifted his head to check that her feet were okay, panicked that he'd somehow failed to keep her warm enough through the night. He hadn't slept well, per se, but he hadn't recalled making sure his companions were safe and that failure hit him squarely in the stomach. His most important job, his sacred duty, and he'd failed? On _Eretraa_?

Leia's feet were nowhere near his legs. She had rolled onto her right side, threaded her legs with Han's and left centimeters between Luke and herself. Luke could see the fingertips of her left hand peeking out of the sleeve of Han's coat, pressed into the open collar of the older man's shirt. Her nose was tucked into Han's jaw, her dark braid snaking out from the hood of her borrowed coat. Han's arm was wrapped around her waist and disappeared into the lining wrapped around Leia's small torso. Luke couldn't see Leia's face, but Han's was turned toward Luke and the utter peace on his friend's face was the most heartwarming thing Luke had seen in years.

Comfort. Sheer intimacy. Warmth.

Luke shook his head, wishing he could take a holo of this moment. _Why do you deny it?_ he wanted to ask them, wanted to shake them into understanding. _Why don't you just accept what we all know is true?_

As if he'd heard Luke's thought Han's eyes flew open, instantly aware and sharp. Luke didn't move, curious as Han first looked at the root above him, then at Leia, and then at Luke. And if Luke lived a thousand years, he would never, ever, forget the expression on Han Solo's face as his eyes met Luke's and the smuggler realized that the woman he loved was pressed against him, sharing his space, seeking his warmth.

With a soft smile, Luke nodded once. Han blinked, licked his lips, and then pressed his nose into the hood surrounding Leia's head.

Luke laughed, a soft, low, vibration, and closed his eyes. They had a few hours yet until they needed to start moving again. They could afford a little more sleep. The peace was nice. The warmth was nice. The rightness was nice.

He closed his eyes and drifted off.


	4. Chapter 4

**Part Four:**

Han didn't fall back asleep. The moment felt too large, the reality too heavy for him to trade it for fitful sleep. Gravitas held him down, his usual irreverence absent, and all he could do was observe.

He watched Luke blink and settle into the hood of his coat, eyes falling shut and breath deepening. He watched the sunrise: the light creeping along the rough edges of their ditch, a cool gray and then a warmer pink. He watched his own breath dissipate into the frozen air around them.

Doing anything else felt beyond his capabilities at the moment. Not only did he feel unable to move: he didn't _want_ to move. There wasn't a damn thing in this universe that felt important enough to leave this short reprieve.

They needed to get up. They needed to get back to the _Falcon_ before Chewie had a meltdown and came looking for them. They needed to get off this planet and get word to the Alliance that the Eretraan intel cell was wiped out. Lives had been lost; time was short.

But.

Han's eyes shifted from the strangled light falling over Luke's shoulder to the warm, beautiful woman nestled into his side. _Leia._ Leia, asleep and unaware, her weight supported by his arm and her forehead tucked into his throat. The softness of her skin, the pressure of her fingertips against his collarbone. The sweep of her eyelashes, the purse of her lips, the flush of her cheek, the stray lock of hair that fell from her hairline to her jaw and cut the smooth expanse of her neck with a warm, brown line.

He'd never seen anything as beautiful in his life. He'd never _felt_ anything as beautiful in his life. He couldn't put it into words; the best he could say was that she was warm against him, a palpable heat radiating through her skin, her clothes, his clothes. Not a physical heat, not suns and kinetic energy or the movement of molecules, but heat in the form of presence _._ She was there, in his arms and against his side. Even a skepticism as healthy as his couldn't deny the significance of their position revealed in the morning light.

He could feel her steady, slow breaths against his neck and his lungs expanded, the muscle between them loud and insistent.

This was a very private fantasy come to life. More intensely private than the rest, because it teetered dangerously on the brink of romance, a concept that felt utterly foreign to him. A fantasy in which Leia Organa came to him, sidled up to him, wrapped herself around him, threaded her legs through his and trusted him enough to fall asleep in his arms. Not a prelude or postscript to a sexual encounter. Just divine simplicity. Routine. Habit.

His hand spasmed against the fabric of the coat wrapped around her back.

He was very aware that this moment was about to end. The minute she awoke, she would realize where she was, who she was with. Whatever unconscious, subconscious, physical need that had prompted it would shatter with the flutter of those eyelashes.

She would wake up and think he had taken advantage of the situation. She would see opportunism where there had been nothing but concern and secret adoration. His one-sided obsession was about to bite him in the ass and he had no one to blame but himself. The mask had been too good. He'd succeeded in his deception and hadn't realized it until it was too late to reverse course.

Ice in his chest, colder than the air on the nape of his neck. Stinging pinpricks of misdirected fire. He ran his free hand over his face, trying to smooth away the ugly truth.

She'd think he was a letcher, a creep, the kind of man that said shit like _you all want to fuck her just as much as I do_. Of course she would think the worst of him. She'd be an idiot not to and Leia Organa was not an idiot. That was all he'd ever fucking shown her.

 _I don't have friends. I'm not in it for you, I'm in it for the money. I care about just one person: me._

He didn't deserve this. He didn't deserve her.

He stared at her hand, white fingers grasping the wrinkled fabric of his shirt. He inhaled the softness of her hair, memorized the weight of her arm. And because he was as terrible as she imagined, he swept his lips against her forehead and pretended for a moment—the barest fraction of a moment—that this was real. That it was all real. The intimacy, the profound connection, the implicit, automatic trust. That it wasn't a glittering moment out of time but the straight line that his life followed.

Then he swallowed and gently shook her awake. "Leia," he whispered.

Her steady breaths caught, her lips opened and closed, a soft hum coming from her throat as she burrowed further into his side. Han's chest seized and for a moment he couldn't find his voice. Every cell in his body urged him to close his eyes, pull her closer, find rest from the consequences of his own actions.

But.

"Leia," he said again, a little louder. "Wake up."

Her eyes snapped open. With resigned acceptance, he watched the dawning realization hit her: sharp understanding, blunt, ruthless awareness. Her hips were the first to move and she used the hand on his chest to maneuver away from him. He felt the slip of her hand with a visceral _thunk_ in his chest. Finally her chin left his shoulder and her eyes caught his, unarmored and questioning.

She blinked. "Are you okay?" she asked. "I'm still wearing your coat."

He shrugged. "I'm fine."

Her eyes were not suspicious. Not in the least. Wide, honest, concerned. Han's confusion mounted. "Is Luke alright?" she asked.

Han nodded. "Behind you and with two good feet."

Leia gave him a look but didn't immediately respond. Han was floored. If he'd placed a bet about her reaction to finding herself in his arms this morning, he would have lost a fortune. He would have bet the _Falcon_ that Leia would automatically assume the worst about his intentions, that she would be defensive, angry. He would have predicted seismic embarrassment, heated words, volley after volley of recriminations.

Instead confused quiet surrounded them.

"We should get up," she whispered after a moment.

Han nodded but didn't say anything, trapped in a mental maze. Years of unbridled lust warred with his saner senses. What he wanted to do was kiss her. She was close and lovely, lips slightly apart, and her eyes were enormous. A soft kiss, barely there, no pressure at all. He didn't want to devour; he wanted to savor. Slip her bottom lip between his, taste the sweetness of her breath. Run his thumb over her jaw. Feel her skin. Innocent, pure touches.

"Morning, guys," Luke said, voice loud as it cut through Han's thoughts.

Han's eyes shot to Luke's fully awake, fully engaged, face. And if Han didn't know better, he would have sworn that Skywalker's eyes held a little too much knowledge. Like he'd sussed out the moment between Han and Leia and made a decision for them all to stop it.

Han shook his head, annoyed with himself. Luke knew as much as Han let him know, and Han hadn't let Luke know more than the basics. Whatever he was seeing in those blue eyes was a figment of Han's imagination, not a testament to whatever Jedi magic Luke thought he possessed.

"Morning, kid," Han said with a nod and a small smile. "Ready to get out of here?"

XXX

Two hours later Han pressed his personal security code into the _Falcon_ 's exterior control panel _,_ thoroughly chilled and deeply chagrined by his worsening physical state. His back was sore, the wind had bitten his skin and it was going to take him a week in the fresher to warm him up. And he was hungry: a big, gaping nothing in his stomach. Rations didn't do shit for hunger pains and nothing— _nothing_ —made him feel as fundamentally human as hunger.

With a sigh of relief, he stepped aboard his ship and out of the wind. Leia followed him and Luke brought up the rear.

"Chewie!" he yelled. "Let's move."

Loud growling erupted from the cockpit, a smartass comment that Han loosely translated as _nice to see you, too, Solo._ Han grumbled under his breath and stomped down the corridor to the cockpit, shaking icy dust from his shirtsleeves as he went.

"Kick the enviro-systems into high gear, too, would you, pal?" he shouted. "We're fucking _freezing_ here."

At the cockpit hatch Han gratefully took in the familiar sight of Chewie running pre-flight system checks. He dropped into his seat like a stone, heavy and with a tight groan. Chewie huffed and tested the auxiliary thrusters, inquiring about their late arrival.

"Her Worship made some friends," Han answered. "The bad kind of friends."

Another growl, low and teasing.

"I ain't as young as I used to be," Han said, gritting his teeth. "And I gave Leia my coat. Wasn't a good combination."

Chewie flipped the scanners onto full power and then turned his head to peer at Han. A series of careful growls, not accusatory but investigatory.

"A little better," Han said quietly. "I don't know, pal. I'll tell you later."

His copilot nodded and then they were in their element, a seamless pair with an unparalleled ship. Flying was precisely what he needed to clear his head. Han needed to rely on his bare instincts, the flight or fight mechanism of a good take-off on an enemy-held world. The challenge, the adrenaline, the high of speed and survival, slicing through clouds and atmosphere until nothing existed but the unforgiving black of space.

That's what he needed. That's _all_ he needed.

"Anyone hailing us?" a low, female voice said from behind him.

Chewie grunted and Han turned a sharp eye on him. Han had warned Chewie not to mention the possibility of Jabba's bounty hunters in the Spinal Arm—a thought that brought back the morning's chill with a vengeance. Both Luke and Leia's comprehension of Shryiiwook was improving, and the last thing Han needed was for either one of them to understand how dire the Jabba situation was becoming.

To cover Chewie's slip, Han flashed a confident grin over his shoulder. "When are you gonna learn that no one can track this ship?" he asked.

"When no one tracks this ship," Leia said, quick as a shot.

 _A little better? Are you sure?_ Chewie grunted under his breath, to which Han could only shrug. Better was probably relative in this case. He hadn't completely destroyed her faith in him. That seemed to count for something.

"Alright, space fans. Let's get out of here," he said, and then punched the launch sequence. The thrusters kicked in, the _Falcon_ shot into the sky and Han let his mind settle into the wonderful laser focus of flight.

XXX

Han rapped on the hatch to the crew cabin with his knuckle without a clear idea of what he was about to do. He'd hoped that flying would have helped his mood, the pit in his stomach that had formed sometime after waking up with Leia in the tree-ditch. But the excitement of flight hadn't done anything to lessen the anxiety-ridden tumor deep in his stomach. Masked it for awhile, sure, but the image of Leia's lips had haunted him every step of the way until he found himself staring out the viewport, silent and mullish.

Han's preoccupation had been obvious enough for Chewie to notice. And after his earlier slip about bounty hunters, Han didn't trust the furball to keep his nose out of the situation. All Han needed was his Wookiee copilot busting into the fray and making a bigger mess of the entire thing than it already was.

Han Solo didn't like an unfinished fight. It was time to fix this once and for all.

Hearing no movement from behind the hatch. he waved his hand in front of the sensor. A rush of air hit his face as the hatch whisked open and Han walked into the cabin with a sense of foreboding determination.

Leia sat on the bunk, tiny and alone. Her bare legs dangled off the edge of the bunk in the muted light of the crew cabin. Her head was down, chin nearly to her chest, and he realized that she had rebraided her hair into its usual stiff tail down her back. Her eyelids fluttered open as he stepped into the nearest pool of light.

"Hey," he said.

She raised her eyes to his. "Hi," she answered. "I felt the hyperdrive kick in. Are we safely out of the Arm?"

"Yeah," he said, wiping his hands on his pants. "No company for once. Kind of a miracle, huh?"

She nodded but offered no response and quiet settled between them. Not the calm, peaceful quiet of this morning, but an awkward, confused quiet.

He shifted his weight, then lamely gestured to the bunk. "Mind?"

He didn't wait for an answer. Sitting next to her on the bunk, he noticed for the first time that she had folded and laid his coat on the far side of the room on a storage container he often used as a desk. He considered the coat for a moment and then turned back around, clasping his hands between his knees and looking at her.

Her eyes were already on him.

"Thank you," she said. "For the coat, I mean."

He nodded and tapped the toe of his boot against the deck twice, a nervous habit. "Wasn't a problem," he said, feeling like he was tiptoeing next to a sleeping nexu. He had no idea what she wanted him to say here. He had no idea what _he_ wanted to say here. There was a canyon between them, wide and deep, and though he wanted to bridge it, he had no resources with which to do it.

Leia resumed her careful study of the far hull, hands in her lap and shoulders tense. Seconds wore on, tired and slow. Han shifted and followed her lead, eyes staring at nothing as he scrambled to think of something to say. His brain felt like a total void. He had foolishly hoped that he would discover the remedy, the bridge for the divide between them, once he saw her. But nothing came to mind.

Given the choice, he would have sling-shotted them back to their earliest days together without a second thought. Open warfare, yes, but so much more comprehensible. He'd pretend that he didn't care, she'd rage at his attitude, and they'd understand each other. He felt a million times safer when she was hurling insults at him. He preferred that openness to this constant unsurety.

With a pang he realized that they might not have ever understood each other. Maybe they were simply on two completely different wavelengths, infrared and gamma rays existing on fundamentally different frequencies. How was he supposed to bridge the gap if he didn't understand a goddamn thing about—

Oh, shit.

He knew exactly what he had to say here. It might seriously kill him. But, hey, could anything be worse than _this?_ This infinite awkwardness, this constant struggle between hiding what he truly wanted and what she thought he wanted?

Han took a deep breath, squared his shoulders and dived headfirst into Leia's wavelength.

"Look, Leia," he began. "I wanted you to know that, uh… I know I fucked up."

She looked up with such speed that her braid flipped over her left shoulder. "You—what?"

He waved a hand in the air around him, unsure why he was doing it. It felt like if he didn't move he might jump out of his skin, tenebrous energy cracking through his nervous system. "I should've apologized… well. I guess I owe you a couple apologies."

Her eyes widened.

Without waiting for her full reaction, he kept going. "I'm sorry for what I said with the kids. That was a … a shitty thing to say and probably a shitty thing to hear."

"It was," she agreed, her tone mild.

"I guess I assumed…." He trailed off and turned to face her, his left knee sliding up to rest on the bunk. His words came out in a rush: thoughtless, honest. Terrifyingly honest. "If there's a person in this galaxy who's more than just a good time, it's you."

Her eyes looked relieved. Almost kind. "Everyone is more than a good time. Not just me."

Han nodded, accepting the mild criticism with the only kind of good grace he had: blatant nonchalance. "Believe it or not, I have heard that. I'm usually better at showing it."

Leia pursed her lips, paused and then slowly nodded. "You usually are, yes."

What wouldn't he give to hear what was running through her mind? Her eyes couldn't seem to hold still on any single place, racing around the cabin like she was following a smashball game. Was she analyzing his tone? Trying to determine his sincerity? Drawing out the suspense to punish him?

He had no fucking clue.

Quiet. The low thrum of the _Falcon_ 's hyperdrive was the only sound he heard aside from his own breathing. Not companionable quiet. There was an edge to this hush, a vibro-blade sharpness to the silence. Either one of them could cut the other to the quick with such deftness, Leia with her ruthless intelligence and Han with his stubborn pride.

Like an uneasy truce.

There was another part to this, he realized. Something nervous in the set of her shoulders that screamed vulnerability. And he understood that feeling well; he'd been feeling the same all morning.

And because they were on her wavelength, she was the one to clear it up for him.

"It hurts," she said, quiet and sure. "It hurts to be talked about like that. Do you understand?"

"No," he answered. "People want you. What's bad about that?"

He didn't mean to sound flippant, but he truly didn't get it. Leia was sexy, smart, beautiful. Anything a man could want and with a level of class that made her so far out of anybody's league that she might as well wear a fucking tiara and declare herself queen of the universe.

Leia seemed a little shocked by his honesty. Han was immediately nervous that he'd been too blunt: his right palm spasmed in its place on his knee.

But she surprised him again, answering him in a patient tone. "It hurts because it's only one part of who I am, and not the part I want to be known for. It's like if someone only wanted to hire you because you have green eyes, not because you're a great pilot. You had no part in making your eyes green; it's an accident of genetics and has nothing to do with your abilities. And I suspect you've worked hard to learn to fly."

He had. It had nearly killed him to get into the Academy, and nearly killed him again to be kicked out of it. Learning to fly had been the hardest and most important thing he'd ever done in his life.

The thought resonated, especially because he hadn't shared any of that with the Alliance or Leia.

"I don't want to be someone whose worth is measured entirely by another person's desire to have sex with me _,"_ she continued. "I am more than that. I am _worth_ more than that."

Well, hell. He couldn't disagree with her there. He nodded, aware she was watching him carefully.

"Been starin' at my eyes again, Princess?" he joked, trying to lighten the mood.

She shook her head but Han glimpsed the smallest of smiles at the corners of her mouth.

"Okay, fine," he said. "You want to be more than just a pretty face. But what if someone wants you for everything else, too?"

Like the depths of her furious confidence in the face of danger and impossible odds. Or the way she looked whenever someone mentioned Alderaan, like the pure manifestation of brute survival. The way she held her blaster, feeding off the energy around her, threatening and bold or protective and calm whenever necessary.

His palm spasmed again.

Leia didn't notice. "You said _fuck._ That's not usually a word people use when they admire someone's _everything else._ "

He shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe not. Probably depends on who's talking."

"I suppose that's true," she admitted. "Still."

He pressed his lips together and nodded once in agreement. "Still. Pretty shitty."

She eyed him with a calm that frankly surprised him. "Pretty shitty," she said. "Yes."

Han couldn't help but laugh. He'd heard her curse before but couldn't remember hearing _shitty_ come from her mouth. It sounded foreign in her voice, rusty and unused and hilarious with a prim and proper _yes_ tailing it.

His laughter died down, settling into the cracks in the interior hull plating like dust. In its place was a different kind of silence, still heavy but laced with an attempt to understand. Nothing she had said was particularly illuminating to him—he may be a mercenary but he understood boundaries pretty well—but she seemed to be taking his gesture at face value. A gift, kind of. Something he was offering to her that bound their vulnerabilities together, even if their vulnerabilities were vastly different from each other.

He'd tried her wavelength and even if he didn't quite reach it, at the very least _he'd tried._ That was more than he could say for his first attempt.

Satisfied that they'd banished the awkwardness for the time being, Han cleared his throat and glanced back to Leia. "Are we friends again?"

She arched a brow at him. "I swear I've heard you say you didn't have friends. Are you notifying me of your change in legal status?"

He rolled his eyes. "Funny," he said.

"Shall I find a notary? Do you think Luke's been licensed?"

"You're hilarious," he said, deadpan but internally celebrating. "Did Chewie teach you how to give me a hard time?"

She shook her head. "No. But perhaps I'll ask him. Since we're friends and all."

She looked up at him, met his eyes, and Han's true inner voice—the one he so ardently tried to ignore—sprung to life, loud and fierce. _Friends? No. You want more._

He wanted her warm skin pressed against his. He wanted the gentle curve of her lips against his tongue. He wanted the strands of her hair between his fingers, sliding through his fist so he could just fucking _pull it_. He wanted her beneath him, above him, against the hull of the _Falcon,_ on the desk of her office, every whim she had, every fantasy he'd harbored.

But more than any of that, he wanted her trust. And that was one thing he could offer her. Trust that he wouldn't overstep her boundaries again. He might not fully understand them, but he understood that she had drawn them very clearly. She'd trusted him enough to spell them out to him. The least he could do was respect them.

"I have a proposition," he said. "Something to avoid this whole shitty mess in the future."

Her eyebrows rose. "A proposition? Really?"

"Yeah," he said. "To clear up any confusion."

"Do tell," she said, turning her knees toward him and tilting her head. "I can't wait to hear this."

He exhaled and opened his hands. "I'm eventually going to say something stupid. And it'll lead us right back to where we've been the last few days and I'm fucking exhausted, so I'd like to avoid that if at all possible."

She narrowed her eyes. "I would suggest trying _not_ to say something stupid in the first place."

"We both know that isn't gonna to happen, so let's focus on a safe word." Leia opened her mouth, but Han cut her off at the bit. "A safe word. Like something that tells me to back off."

"And you'll listen?" she asked dubiously.

He shrugged. "Yeah, I'll listen. You always gotta respect the safe words."

Leia leaned back on her hands, considering. By the look in her eyes, he knew she'd understood his none-too-subtle innuendo. After a moment, she said, "Fine. What's the safe word?"

"Well," he said, standing up, "how about _green eyes_ for _shut the hell up before I kick your ass_?"

She laughed, closing her eyes. "Sounds good," she said.

He made a bowing motion as he walked backwards toward the hatch. She turned her head, reached for a datapad he hadn't noticed lying on the bunk beside her.

But he wasn't done yet. "And, Leia?"

She looked up to him, eyes big. "Yes?"

"If you want me to keep going, all you have to say is _please, Captain, rock my world._ "

With a leer he turned around and walked out of the cabin, the hatch closing on her unamused _it'll never happen, Flyboy._

XXX

 _One year later_

Han was bone-tired. The cable he'd been trying to repair was an old, ugly son of bitch, hotwired at least three years ago and fraying at it's most delicate point. How the ever-loving fuck had he missed it in his last sweep? He was a better mechanic than that.

He wiped his hand across his brow and dropped into the holochess bench. His arms ached from reaching above his head for nearly two hours. He hadn't gotten enough sleep last night, either. Not that he was complaining, but the exhaustion was settling in faster and faster as this trip went on.

By his best estimate, they were still two weeks from Bespin. Chewie's great idea to undertake sorely-procrastinated repairs had been welcome at first. With weeks to wait, any project was a good project. Han had seen cabin-fever before and it wasn't pretty. The repairs, minor as they might be, were a welcome respite from the swallowing insanity of boredom.

But then Leia had … and they had …

… and now Han was not interested in menial repair work.

He dropped his head back and blew out his breath. They'd run out of alcohol after the first week of travel and Han hadn't missed it at all until this very moment, when he could really use a nerve-deadening, muscle-relaxing shot of whiskey to take the edge off his overworked arms and shoulders.

Arms loose at his sides and eyes closed, he didn't hear her until she was nearly to him. When he caught her footsteps, he raised his head and grinned at the sight before him, radiant and casual as only Leia could be. Dressed in an old shirt of his and a pair of loose combat pants she'd left on the _Falcon_ during a mission forever ago, she was the open epitome of _dressed down_ : hair loose around her shoulders and a coy smile playing on her lips.

"Hey," he said, opening his dead arms to her. "What's a nice girl like you doing in a dive like this?"

In a move that still sent him into residual shock weeks after they'd begun sleeping together, Leia settled on his lap, straddling him. The fit was tight; the oversized holochess table didn't leave room for easy maneuvering, that was for sure. But Leia made it work, turning even the most uncomfortable of positions into a memory he could never forget.

"Looking for a good time," she said, eyes bright. "Heard you might be the man for the job."

His mind fractured. The phrase _a good time_ echoed in his ear over and over, weighted. It felt heavy in his memory, something he couldn't quite remember but absolutely remembered at the same time.

He slid his palms over her knees and up her thighs, watching the sly turn of her mouth. She looked so beautiful, ethereal in her absolute disarray. Nothing about her expression or her dress said _Leia Organa, Princess of Alderaan_ and it made him thrum, alive under her weight and her smile. The reality was better than he'd ever imagined it could be, stuck in a sublight trek to an uncertain destination, food rationed and their days together numbered.

He dismissed the thought immediately.

"I might be," he said, dropping his tone to match hers, "if you're lucky."

She gave him a brilliant smile and his heart trundled into a hard stop at the sight. "Well," she said, sliding her hands up his chest and to his shoulders. "I don't know about lucky, but I've been told I'm very ... persuasive."

He grinned. "That so? What could you possibly say that would change my mind?"

Leia looked him dead in the eye, wide and cunning, then dipped her lips to his ear. With the lightest touch, she kissed his earlobe and then very slowly and very carefully whispered, "Please, Captain. Rock my world."

Han blinked, leaned back and caught her gaze, playful but sincere and with full knowledge of what those long-ago words meant to him. Even as a joke, even as a dare.

"Well, when you put it that way," he said, and then kissed his princess soundly.

 _The End_


End file.
